$8.50 Hop strainer

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emyers

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I was inspired by a similar thread using a jumbo SS tea ball. I down scaled mine using a 4" ball. This took about 3 minutes from start to finish. I reshaped the ball to fit better under my pickup arm and fit flush against the keg bottom.

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I'd be concerned about it getting clogged with it being as small as it is. People have had issues with bigger hop pancakes. Let us know how it works though
 
I used to use a jumbo. Worked great with gravity through my plate chiller but with a pump recirculating it clogs instantly. Now I use a giant stainless mesh basket (like the ones that stainless brewing sell and I should have just bought it from them). I'm going to keep testing various set ups
 
Im using gravity, about 5 feet worth, and a counterflow. My last batch clogged up so bad i had to use compressed air to clear the CFC. Do you use whole leaf or pellets?
 
Do not bother trying this if you are using a pump. I completely collapsed the same tea ball in a mildly hopped pale ale. Worst part was it happened in less than a minute as I was transfering into my fermenter. Had to Star san my arm and pull it off. Beer came out fine, but lesson learned.
 
I used a larger tea ball and it clogged quickly. I use pellet hops with a side pickup...even after whirl-pooling i still pulled too much hop matter into the ball and it cut my flow rate significantly. Ended up popping it off. Now, granted I am using a pump, but its nothing like a a 420gph march, it only pumps 108gph, so there's no extreme suction going on in the kettle.

I think that $8.50 may be better spent building a hop spider. They also double as a filter when draining from the mash tun :)
 
I will be using whole hop leaf with this. Hopefully i wont have horrible results. My Brew day last week got bumped to this sat so results will be posted shortly.
 
I will be using whole hop leaf with this. Hopefully i wont have horrible results. My Brew day last week got bumped to this sat so results will be posted shortly.

If you're using whole leaf hops, I can almost guarantee you'll be fine. Just whirlpool and if it starts getting clogged take ur mash paddle and kinda push away from the filter, no biggie.
 
I got around to using this today. I actually used pellets with good results until it got down to the very bottom.
 
I found this at Ikea. Its a stainless utensil holder. It was about 6inches tall, but I trimmed it down to about 3 inches to fit the dip tube. I use a lot of whole leaf, and this suprisingly blocks about 95% of the leaf. If I let it settle after chilling, I get about the same percent with pellets. Maybe cost me $3.50.

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curse your $5 saved!! LOL... Nice looking filter. Looks real easy to clean too.
 
I'm heading to Ikea this week. I will definitely be looking for this utensil holder when I go. Thanks for the tip.

What do you think about lining the inside in the utensil holder with some ss mesh? Would that filter out more or just ask for clogging?
 
Or even a nylon mesh on the outside might work better. I guess I can try it out and see if it works out not.
 
I thought about using mesh on it when I first got it. After my experiance with the tea ball, I decided to stay away from mesh. It worked well enough that I decided not to do anything to is. Of coarse its no Blickman hopblocker, but does the job at hand. The other idea I had for it was to loosly wrap it in stainless wire to act as a screen.
 
Just a update. I tried to use this with six oz pellets and only one oz leaf with horrible rresults. It clogged near the end and left me with about a gal still in the pot. So only use pellets if equally matched with whole leaf to make a better filter bed
 
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