trub and hop filtering advice

[lagermeister1]

hey everybody, i am new to the forum but not new to brewing. looking forward to helping and learning in the forum.

i recently aquired a 10 gallon mega pot and i am trying to decide the best method to filter trub and hops out while draining from the spigot without braking my bank. i currently have a 90 degree ss elbow fitting for pickup in the kettle. while this works great for draining there is currently no filter in line or screen inside.

i know the easiest and quite effecient item would be to use one of the ss false bottoms fitted for my pot. i am hesitant though because of the $140 price tag and while i use my immersian chiller the screen will make it less efficient by raising it off the bottom of the pot. my pot has a larger diameter than most so that an inch of wort off the bottom is equal to about a gallon.

another neat item i was thinking would be the blichemann hop rocket. it seems it works very well as a filter and a hop back. i was about to pull the trigger on this because of the dual benefit and started thinking about clogging issues. they say this guy needs to be used with whole hops. does this mean i cant use pellet hops at all during the boil or are they just talking about not using them inside the hop rocket?? also i dont have a pump or a plate chilller.
since i would be running cool worth through the rocket i would not be taking the best advantage for hop aroma correct?

im wondering if there is a cheap way to make a filter that can double as a hopback. and if somebody who has made one could comment on how it works. ideally somebody who is using an immersian chiller like i do.

 

[kombat]

I use the Hop Stopper. It's basically an elbow pickup tube sized to reach the very center of your kettle, shrouded in mesh to block hop and break matter.

It works great and produces very clear wort, but there's been a bit of a learning curve with it. The biggest problem I encountered is that when draining the kettle through the valve, once the screen begins to become exposed, you need to throttle way back on the valve and reduce the flow. This is because the screen captures so much hop and break matter that wort is unable to flow inside the screen (and thus, to the pickup tube) as fast as you're draining, and you can lose suction (which is a show-stopper, as I cannot get my pump reprimed once air has been sucked into the line).

To resolve this problem, I now drain my wort through the valve, through my plate chiller, and then run it back into the kettle instead of into my fermenter. That way the Hop Stopper is always completely immersed, and I can run at a higher flow rate. I simply monitor the thermometer on my kettle, and once the temperature is down to 65° F, I stop recirculating and drain the wort into my fermenter using a plain old autosiphon. That allows me to get every last drop of wort.

While this method keeps break and hop matter out of my plate chiller, it does mean that some of it makes it into the fermenter (through the autosiphon, which is immersed directly into the kettle), but that's fine - a little break material is good for the yeast, and the vast majority of it is still left behind in the kettle (or clumped onto the Hop Stopper).

It is a bit of a pain to clean, though.

 

[lagermeister1]

sounds like a great setup and thanks for the input on the hop stopper.