Hop sludge when transferring wort—what to do?

[ncoutroulis]

This is only my second brew, so lots of dumb questions...

When transferring my wort to the carboy, i'm pouring it through a funnel which has a fine mesh screen—which gets clogged almost immediately with what looks like green "hop sludge".

What i've done (both times so far), is continuously scrape this filter, so the wort can pass through it.

This takes loads of time, since i have to essentially pour only a small amount of wort at a time, scrape, then discard all this nasty sludge.

Curious if this is what everyone else does, or if i should just pour everything, hop sludge and all, into the carboy.

thanks

 

[d3track]

Just dump it, straining and scraping is a pita

 

[ncoutroulis]

Just dump it, straining and scraping is a pita

Just dump the whole thing into the carboy?

if so, what happens to all that sludge?

And by scraping it out, am i effecting the taste of the beer?

 

[GenIke]

Dump it all in. It will settle out in the fermenter. There's no change in flavor .

 

[duboman]

You could also siphon from the kettle to the fermenter like you rack to the bottling bucket, just keep the siphon above the grub layer.

Just another idea if you're not keen on simply dumping, either way is fine

 

[Sharks8kelly]

I would also recommend the use of hop bags during the boil to cut down on the amount of trub. There will always be some, but it will settle out at the bottom of your carboy. Don't worry about it your beer will still taste great!

 

[brewbama]

I second the hop spider. I made one for less than $15. It catches most of the hop vegetation matter, then just dump the rest into the fermenter. Your brew house efficiency will thank you.

 

[d3track]

Just dump the whole thing into the carboy?

if so, what happens to all that sludge?

And by scraping it out, am i effecting the taste of the beer?

Yeah, just dump it all, it settles out. The scraping doesn't do much but create time for wild yeast to settle in.

 

[beergolf]

Just dump it all in. No big deal. It all drops out after a while.

Here read this
http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/.

 

[GenIke]

Just dump it all in. No big deal. It all drops out after a while.

Here read this
http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/.

Interesting link!

 

[wyobrewer1]

You could also siphon from the kettle to the fermenter like you rack to the bottling bucket, just keep the siphon above the grub layer.

Just another idea if you're not keen on simply dumping, either way is fine

This is what I do when transferring into a carboy.

 

[Mexibilly]

^ +1 ^
I started out dumping from the kettle. I siphon now and have learned to better control my boil volume based on boil and trub loss.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

The last time I removed as much of the trub from my beer as I could:

1. My efficiency took a hard dump
2. My ferment smelled horibbly of sulfur farts
3. Off flavors in the final product

Clarity has been the same and flavor and ferment have all been better since just dumping that crap in.

 

[aangel]

The last time I removed as much of the trub from my beer as I could:

1. My efficiency took a hard dump
2. My ferment smelled horibbly of sulfur farts
3. Off flavors in the final product

Clarity has been the same and flavor and ferment have all been better since just dumping that crap in.

I understand why efficiency might suffer if you remove trub, since you're also removing some wort. What about the ferment though? I don't understand why a fermentation would smell different/worse without hop trub vs with. Well I can imagine ONE situation, but I'm not enough of a chemist to state it without sounding like an idiot.

Same question about off-flavors - why on earth would removing hop trub, which is essentially not a part of fermentation, affect flavor? Unless you're contaminating during your trub removal process?

 

[thekraken]

I vote for normally just dumping all the junk in... If you have the room. I just brewed a 5.5 gallon batch and had to use a 6 gallon plastic carboy for my fermenter. Being an IPA I wanted to remove as much hop matter from the very beginning to give my self some more head space (I didn't use a hop bag during boil). I took a fine mesh 5 gallon straining bag, sanitized it, and placed it inside the carboy while *firmly* holding the end of the bag over the mouth of the carboy. I then ran off my wort through the bag into the fermenter. After some jimmying I was able to pull the bag back out of the fermenter along with all the hop debris and break material. The process of squeezing this bag of crap back out through the small mouth of the carboy insured that I got all the wort I was going to get out of this trub.

Fermentation took off, blowoff hose required, smells great. Time will tell how it compares to the last time I brewed this recipe where I was able to just throw all the junk in.

 

[1977Brewer]

I literally threw the screen from my funnel in the trash after trying to strain one batch. You're going to get trub no matter what, a If the hop particles bother you, fileter in the boil. I use a 1 gallon paint strainer bag and a bulldog clip. I'm going to dry hop in the same bag.

 

[jason1973]

if you primary in a bucket can strain thru a strainer, allows fast transfer.
for smell did you sanitize funnel and screen, and is what you useing to scrape hops out of way sanitized, and layed back in sanitizer when not scrapping?
what sanitizer useing?

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

I understand why efficiency might suffer if you remove trub, since you're also removing some wort. What about the ferment though? I don't understand why a fermentation would smell different/worse without hop trub vs with. Well I can imagine ONE situation, but I'm not enough of a chemist to state it without sounding like an idiot.

Same question about off-flavors - why on earth would removing hop trub, which is essentially not a part of fermentation, affect flavor? Unless you're contaminating during your trub removal process?

I think it has to do with there being a lot of compounds in the trub that yeast like to eat, and by removing those they were at greater risk to stress, therefore affecting flavor and fermentation aromas. The real point of my post is that I've never had any bad things happen in both hop and malt forward beers since adding the trub into primary.

But I too, am not a scientist and am only speaking from experience.

 

[aangel]

I think it has to do with there being a lot of compounds in the trub that yeast like to eat, and by removing those they were at greater risk to stress, therefore affecting flavor and fermentation aromas. The real point of my post is that I've never had any bad things happen in both hop and malt forward beers since adding the trub into primary.

But I too, am not a scientist and am only speaking from experience.

Yeah that was my unscientific guess, that the hop trub was providing some necessary nutrient that the wort was otherwise deficient. It doesn't entirely make sense to me though; you'd figure pelletized hops, boiled for an absurd amount of time, coupled with the wort, would provide everything required? I wonder if taking a look at your water profile would be worthwhile.

 

[ncoutroulis]

Thanks for all the insight.

Next batch I'm going to dump it all through the screen-less funnel.

Hope this batch i just did comes out drinkable.

cheers

 

[McKnuckle]

Personally I prefer to filter pellet hop trub because, well, it's easy. You can use either a simple mesh bag or a fancy stainless steel canister filter in the boil. But the break material? It's almost impossible to remove, and has no practical negative impact, so I just pour it all into the fermenter.

 

[aangel]

Personally I prefer to filter pellet hop trub because, well, it's easy. You can use either a simple mesh bag or a fancy stainless steel canister filter in the boil. But the break material? It's almost impossible to remove, and has no practical negative impact, so I just pour it all into the fermenter.

I have a few cleanable filters (50 micron and 1 micron), and am wondering if the break material will come out if I filter inline to the fermenter post-chill.

 

[McKnuckle]

They will likely get hopelessly clogged. I have a 75 micron pail filter that I have attempted to use in the past. It gets some of the trub, but has to be scraped continuously or it just fills up and overflows.

(It ain't worth the trouble!)

 

[agrazela]

I'm with McKnuckle. I have tried many screening / bagging methods and I find there is no practical way for me to strain out break and trub, so I don't even bother to try anymore. Into primary it goes, as per Brulosopher.

I have gone back to using hop bags for the kettle hops, though. I used to dump all that into primary, too. And while it did all settle out and did not seem to have any effect on the ferment or the clarity of the finished beer (so long as I use good racking skills), etc., I was almost always getting a grassy, vegetal flavor, followed by a rough aftertaste--especially in heavily hopped ales. Since going back to hop bags, those issues are gone. I still add dry hops un-bagged.

I kinda always figured that there could be no good coming from having the beer sit on boiled, spent hops for weeks.

(I use only pellet hops BTW, I tried leaf hops early on but could never get some fresh enough that they did not smell like cheese )

 

[Queequeg]

+1 to the hop spider. The only time I dumped pellets into the fermenter I got gushers in the bottle. Also had a very low brewhouse efficiency.

 

[aangel]

I'm also toying with the idea of using a BIAB nylon mesh bag on my pot during the boil, and just use gravity & maybe some squeezing to remove the trub it catches post-boil. Thoughts?

 

[The_Bishop]

+1 to the hop spider. The only time I dumped pellets into the fermenter I got gushers in the bottle. Also had a very low brewhouse efficiency.

This likely has nothing to do with your bottle gushers unless you get hop pellet trub in the bottles providing nucleation sites, and I'd be skeptical of even that.

Also, I'd like to know how pellet hops had an effect on your brewhouse efficiency, unless you were so worried about trub in the fermenter that you left too much wort behind in the kettle?

 

[McKnuckle]

I'm also toying with the idea of using a BIAB nylon mesh bag on my pot during the boil, and just use gravity & maybe some squeezing to remove the trub it catches post-boil. Thoughts?

It's overkill. You'll try that, and I guarantee you'll ask yourself "What exactly is my giant bag catching, anyway?"

It will trap hop pellets, but that's it. All of the hot and cold break material are too fine for any mesh bag. So, to trap hop pellets, just use the same bag material in a much smaller format. Clip a small bag to the side of the kettle. Or build a spider - it's just a PVC ring suspended over the kettle with long bolts, and has a mesh bag hanging from it.

 

[aangel]

It's overkill. You'll try that, and I guarantee you'll ask yourself "What exactly is my giant bag catching, anyway?"

It will trap hop pellets, but that's it. All of the hot and cold break material are too fine for any mesh bag. So, to trap hop pellets, just use the same bag material in a much smaller format. Clip a small bag to the side of the kettle. Or build a spider - it's just a PVC ring suspended over the kettle with long bolts, and has a mesh bag hanging from it.

My thinking was that hop utilization is reduced using spiders & smaller bags?

 

[McKnuckle]

I've read that and I'm sure there's probably some validity to it, especially for late additions, although I can't imagine it's a huge difference.

If that bothers you, another way to approach this is to put the pellets directly in the boil, but use a bag or canister afterwards, on the way to the fermenter. If you have a canister, you can hang it on the side of the pail and drain into it (using a funnel if necessary). A similar contraption could easily be made with a spider type design with hardware to enable hanging on the rim.

Or you could shove a bag into your carboy and rubber band it to the top, pour into it, then pull it out. It will contain just the hop gunk, but that's it's purpose in life anyway.

 

[Queequeg]

This likely has nothing to do with your bottle gushers unless you get hop pellet trub in the bottles providing nucleation sites, and I'd be skeptical of even that.

Also, I'd like to know how pellet hops had an effect on your brewhouse efficiency, unless you were so worried about trub in the fermenter that you left too much wort behind in the kettle?

both your assumptions are correct

 

[thekraken]

I use whirlfoc tablets when I brew. Usually I dump everything in the fermenter and forget about it and there will be all those crazy weird clouds of break material floating around the carboy for a few hours.

I posted earlier in the thread how I used a fine mesh bag to filter out the hops as it was going into my fermenter in order to free up a little head room. I used some whirlfloc as usual this time too, after I finished chilling the crazy clouds were floating around in my kettle like normal. After straining my wort through the mesh bag and removing the bag, there was no break material visible in the carboy like there usually is, the wort was as clear in the fermenter as I've ever seen it (pre-fermentation)... I don't know if the mesh bag just broke up those coagulated break clouds and forced them back into solution with the wort or if it mostly filtered out with the hop junk. Thoughts?

 

[burninator]

I use a strainer bag in my fermenting bucket. When the boil is done, and the wort is cool, I pour it in and strain out the hops.