Cold break/chilling question

[All4meGROG]

My wort was chilling in an ice bath in the sink...I gave a soft superficial stir to help the cooling process, and the wort became cloudy. I cant tell if it settled or not after (darn sam adams winter variety pack!)

Anyway...is that "cold break" getting stirred up?

 

[mdatum]

When you are done with cooling the wort, and before you put it in the primary, my understanding is that you want to aerate the wort as much as possible.

Any cloudy material should sink to the bottom while it is fermenting.

 

[RM-MN]

Yes that cloudy stuff is cold break. Sometimes it looks like cottage cheese in the bottom of the pot of wort. Stir it in good if you want, siphon around it if you want, either way makes good beer. I usually don't stir my wort and just dump it all into the fermenter. The yeast will sort it out, use what they want, and then drop the rest of it to the bottom of the fermenter.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

I usually cool wort in the kettle with an immersion chiller, then drop into the fermenter through a stainless steel seive to catch the bigger materials (usually hops sediment)

 

[MuchoGusto]

Cooling the wort down quickly requires vigorous stirring when sitting in an ice bath (I use an immersion chiller now... I still stir). Don't worry about the trub/cold break floating around. You can ferment with or without the trub. I strained it out on my last 2 batches with the following method. Cooled wort to 70. Took a sanitized 5 gal bucket with a sanitized 5 gal nylon paint strainer (Sherwin-Williams) placed inside the bucket. Poured the wort in. Gathered up the strainer and with sanitized latex gloves squeezed out the wort caught in the trub in the strainer. Then pour into carboy, top off and aerate with pure O2 for 2 minutes and pitch the yeast. After fermentation, I have a nice thick, creamy layer of yeast on the bottom with little trub.