Ugh, whole leaf disaster!!!

I recently made a large purchase of hops in whole leaf form. I started out using them in dry hoping but a last night I brewed a heavy aroma IPA. All but 2 oz out of the 12oz was whole leaf. I did plan ahead and bought one of those tube screens knowing that those hops will plug up my valve when transferring to the fermenter (I already learned that lesson before). I could tell I was in for some trouble when I tossed in my Flame out hops and started the flow to the chiller. Flow was ok for the first half, but it QUICKLY slowed down to a trickle. I tried using a metal spoon to clear leafs from the screen and that worked a little but with about 1 gallon left in the kettle I couldn't get flow to save my life. I had to ditch the stranded wort and pitch yeast on my 9 gallons of wort. I was shooting for 12, thats by far the largest margin of poor efficiency Ive seen yet.

I could probably just reserve these whole hops for dry hopping and beers that require minimal hops, But id really like to know a trick to prevent this from happening again.

While I was buying the tube screen the B3 guy suggested bags but I figured surface area and contact time is the golden ticket with hops. What are some of you guys doing to control large whole leaf hop additions?

 

I use whole hops exclusively and all I use for a filter is a chore boy SS scrubie. The only times I've had trouble with clogging is when I used pellets or steeped grain after the mash with a muslin bag. As long I keep pellets out and use a paint strainer bag for steeping, it's all good. I've used 18 oz of whole hops in a 15 gallon boil with no issues.

 

You have options!

• Hop Bag - get a few nylon paint strainer bags at Home Depot...bag the hops during the boil, pull 'em out when you're done
• Sanitize a stainless strainer and scoop out the bulk of material before transferring
• Line fermenting buckets with strainer bag...pour entire kettle into bucket, lift out the bag, let it drain...done. Easy with 5g batch...probably needs 2 people for 10 gallons.
• Hop spider - lots of builds on here
• Stainless scrubbie as filter

 

Paint strainer bags from HD. $5 for 2. Okay to boil and works like a charm for me.

 

I like the SS scrubie idea.

Would I just attach that to a male thread fitting with a SS hose clamp?

 

I just shove mine over the dip tube. Here's a pic

 

Hahaha. Looks like a kettle-merkin. Kyle

 

Does this method work for whole leaf as well as pellet hops?

 

I would suspect the pellet hops are mostly contained, yes. I've done it only once and I didn't notice much, if any hop trub in the fermenter.