sliprose
Member
Getting the wort from the kettle to the primary (leaving the trub behind) has been the most trouble I've had in my homebrewing. I've been mainly using leaf hops (about 3oz per 5gallon batch), and I've struggled with every technique I've tried: lost siphons, clogged autosiphons, unsuccessful whirlpooling, trub into the primary, etc. I'm using just a plain 10 gal stockpot w/no false bottom and going to a plastic bucket primary. I've been trying to avoid using a hop bag, as with the price of hops, I want to maximize utilization.
On my 8th batch, I finally got a process that seemed to work okay - this is what I did:
1) set one side of the cooled kettle on a book to put it on an angle
2) took my stirrer and agitated the wort while pushing the trub to the low point on the bottom of the kettle. I let it sit for about 10 minutes to settle.
3) Put my autosiphon at the high point of the bottom kettle and siphoned to the primary. This did lose siphon twice when a few pieces of hop leafs clogged the autosiphon. I took off the cap cleaned out, and restarted. There was about 1/2 gallon of wort left that I couldn't get with the siphon.
4) I then put a 5 gallon paint strainer over my ale pail primary and carefully poured the remaining wort through it. I was amazed at how well the strainer kept the trub sludge out of the primary.
I'm now wondering if on my next batch I should just forget the autosiphon and just pour the wort directly through the paint strainer? Does anyone use that technique or have a better one I should consider?
On my 8th batch, I finally got a process that seemed to work okay - this is what I did:
1) set one side of the cooled kettle on a book to put it on an angle
2) took my stirrer and agitated the wort while pushing the trub to the low point on the bottom of the kettle. I let it sit for about 10 minutes to settle.
3) Put my autosiphon at the high point of the bottom kettle and siphoned to the primary. This did lose siphon twice when a few pieces of hop leafs clogged the autosiphon. I took off the cap cleaned out, and restarted. There was about 1/2 gallon of wort left that I couldn't get with the siphon.
4) I then put a 5 gallon paint strainer over my ale pail primary and carefully poured the remaining wort through it. I was amazed at how well the strainer kept the trub sludge out of the primary.
I'm now wondering if on my next batch I should just forget the autosiphon and just pour the wort directly through the paint strainer? Does anyone use that technique or have a better one I should consider?