Hop spider issue

[Dave T]

Hi, happy new year. Celebrating the end of this dreadful year with a Belgian quad.

always used a hop spider, never any issues even when I made dh60 clone which seemed to have more hops than grain. Today, it’s clogged. Not a lot of hops, 3oz, but it plugged after the first add. thoughts?

 

[rburrelli]

Please clarify. I don’t have a hop spider but am getting one soon. Why would it clog? It merely sits in wort and contains the hops in place.

 

[day_trippr]

Spiders can clog from hops, or even with break material before hops are added. And if the mesh is not thoroughly cleaned from one brew day to the next the build up of resins will eventually cause it to become useless.

An hour soak in hot PBW will fry all the resin out of the mesh, and it will work better. Bt/dt...

Cheers!

 

[Off Balance Brewing]

I've had the same problem. Trying the mesh bag spyder next to see if it's easier to keep clean and drain. Bags are cheap to rotate out.

 

[day_trippr]

Huh. I thought I had posted a couple of illustrative pics but looking at the time stamp I'm betting The Spousal Unit had called me to dinner

Anyway, this is what my 400 micron mesh spider looked like after just two brew days, with only a powerful and fairly extensive (probably 5 minutes) hot blasting rinse afterwards.

And this is what it looked like after sitting in a bucket of hot PBW for an hour.

Aside from the "Eeeewwww!" factor, an open mesh is going to do the best it can do...

Cheers!

 

[El Duderino]

I use a stir stick in my hop spider during the boil to keep the hops moving and in suspension

 

[cactusgarrett]

I use a stir stick in my hop spider during the boil to keep the hops moving and in suspension

This. I've used upwards of 6oz of pellet hops in my spider, and my biggest concern is that the hoppy "goodness" (ie. resins, alpha acids, etc.) is getting adequately distributed to the kettle. I'll stir within the spider every 5min or so and immediately afterwards I see the kettle kick up so I'm fairly confident that it's beneficial.

 

[Dave T]

I have a pump on my cooker, so I recirc through the spider. Interesting pics, thank you. I haven’t put mine in sanitizer ever, might be the issue. I rinse with sprayer and dry, didn’t expect resins to get on it.

 

[day_trippr]

Don't worry about sanitizing, that happens in under a second in the boil. Cleaning, however, is something to seriously consider, especially if you use a lot of late hops (neipa) because I think that's a part of this.

I had seriously blasted the entire spider from both inside and outside for a good five minutes with the hottest tap water with a high pressure spray pattern after both of that brand new spider's first two outings but all that resinous schmutz had a death grip on the mesh. It had to be chemically erased

Cheers!