Seperating Hops from Wort

[Slaquor]

My wife and I are enjoying brewing very much. We do extracts for now and it is working well.

The only complaint we have is after cooling the wort, we have a hard time separating the hops from the wort. Typically how we do it is use a funnel and some kind of a filter. We have tried coffee filters in the funnel, sanitized dish towels, metal strainers etc. However this never works well and usually increases our brew time usually by about 40%. I dont have an autosiphon (which I am workin on that). I also usually find that the hops are usually pretty well suspended around the bottom 1/3 of the pot, so I like to try and get as much wort into the primary as possible.

What suggestions are out there to help me separate the wort from the hops in a decent amount of time?

 

[NWMushroom]

You can either place the hops in a muslin bag before throwing them into your kettle, or just don't worry too much about the trub transferring to your fermenter.

I started with the earlier, now I do the latter.

 

[orcus332]

+1 to mushroom, i just pour it all into the primary and let it hang out for 4 weeks!

 

[R35P3CT]

+1 to mushroom, i just pour it all into the primary and let it hang out for 4 weeks!

this!

 

[wheels4]

I dont use carboys to ferment I use the plastic pails. Makes it easier to transfer to primary and aerate at the same time. I use the 5 gallon paint strainers from Blowes or Home Cheapo. Boil them for 15 minutes in seperate pot, put them in the pail. When my wort is cooled I just pour the whole thing in the fermenter. I pour it from chest height. This will aerate the wort so you dont have to shake rattle and roll. Then just lift the bag hold the top closed and grab it from the bottom. I then roll it back and forth to get the wort out and throw it away. You can rinse and reuse if you like but this is very easy. I then ferment in primary for 1-3 weeks depending on beer and (dont get upset here) transfer to secondary (carboy). I usually leave it there for another 1-3 depending on beer and cold crash for another week. When I keg there is only yeast in the secondary. Beers are always nice and clean and not much trub in pail.

 

[unionrdr]

I was using hop sacks religiously with pellet hops,then grain bags for whole leaf hops. I used all whole leaf this last time,since my LHBS started carrying them from Hop Union. Dumped them into the BK loose.
I poured all through my fine mesh strainer perched atop my cooper's micro brew FV. lots of piled up hop dregs. But the strainer is great for aerating the chilled wort. I pressed as much wort out of the hop dregs as possible. Think I'll save some extra hassle next time & pick up some muslin grain sacks. Whole leaf hops take up way more space,even though they're weighed out as 1oz,just like pellet hops.
That fine mesh strainer is a great thing to have in the 10" size. Aerates the wort while straining it into the FV.

 

[Mpavlik22]

Just dump it all in the fermenter. It will settle out after fermentation. That's what I did for the longest time.

Now I whirlpool and let it sit for 30 min. Then I use a auto siphon to remove the wort. It works very well for me.

 

[EROK]

When the chilling is complete, say you hit 70 degrees or so. Take a sanatized spoon and stir the wort fast in a whirlpool until it is really moving in the kettle.

Then cover the brew kettle with the sanitized lid and leave it alone for 20 minutes. All the trub, hop crap etc. will move to the center of the kettle.

You then can use an auto-syphon from the outside edge of the kettle and you will get nothing but clear wort until the bottom inch or so of the pot. If you make your post-boil volume say 6.25 gal rather than 5.5gal you will have enough room to not even touch that junk in the bottom as you will hit your carboy volume 5.5 gal before you get that last inch or so of junk.

Works great for me.

 

[h22lude]

I started off by pouring the whole thing in. A few batches later I got a strainer and used that to strain everything out before putting into the bucket. Like you I had to dump out the break material and hops a few times. A few batches after that I used the whirlpool method and syphoned from the edge.

Next I think I am going to try the paint strainer bag next. This seems to be a very easy method. You can just dump everything in. You don't have to deal with waiting for the whirlpool and then syphoning.

All in all, they all work fine. If you just dump it in without straining you will just have more trub on the bottom. It doesn't affect flavor.