First off, a confession; I am troubled by trub.
Been brewing all grain for about 2 years and my experience has taught me that when lots of trub (cold break) carries over into the fermentation, it negatively impacts flavor. The flavor attribute I assign to it is is harshness (taste the trub sometime-it tastes harsh) So I avoid it. And from what I read, it is near impossible to completely remove the cold break, so despite my efforts, I've never seen a fermentation go awry from lack of nutrients/fatty acids or whatever the cold break contributes to the fermentation.
I have a low tech setup: picnic cooler mash tun, no recirculating pump. So to remove trub I allow the cooled wort to settle in a 6 gallon carboy for an hour, then rack the clarified wort into a second carboy and start the fermentation. This works great but, to my dismay, I lose 1-1.5 gallons of hard-earned, beautiful wort because that is all the settling I get. Letting settling go longer in the carboy helps a little but not much.
Here's my new wrinkle: after settling and racking from the carboy, I pour the remaining trub-besmirched wort into a sanitized 4 liter graduated cylinder. I cover the cylinder and let it sit beside the fermentation carboy (the proximity helps the wort in the cylinder aspire to be fermented ). The photo shows the result after about 16 hours of settling in the cylinder. Pouring the clarified wort off the trub into the fermentation carboy is a piece of cake; almost no mixing occurs due to the geometry of the cylinder.
Voila, 2 liters additional clarified wort
Been brewing all grain for about 2 years and my experience has taught me that when lots of trub (cold break) carries over into the fermentation, it negatively impacts flavor. The flavor attribute I assign to it is is harshness (taste the trub sometime-it tastes harsh) So I avoid it. And from what I read, it is near impossible to completely remove the cold break, so despite my efforts, I've never seen a fermentation go awry from lack of nutrients/fatty acids or whatever the cold break contributes to the fermentation.
I have a low tech setup: picnic cooler mash tun, no recirculating pump. So to remove trub I allow the cooled wort to settle in a 6 gallon carboy for an hour, then rack the clarified wort into a second carboy and start the fermentation. This works great but, to my dismay, I lose 1-1.5 gallons of hard-earned, beautiful wort because that is all the settling I get. Letting settling go longer in the carboy helps a little but not much.
Here's my new wrinkle: after settling and racking from the carboy, I pour the remaining trub-besmirched wort into a sanitized 4 liter graduated cylinder. I cover the cylinder and let it sit beside the fermentation carboy (the proximity helps the wort in the cylinder aspire to be fermented ). The photo shows the result after about 16 hours of settling in the cylinder. Pouring the clarified wort off the trub into the fermentation carboy is a piece of cake; almost no mixing occurs due to the geometry of the cylinder.
Voila, 2 liters additional clarified wort