Counterflow Cold Break and Hop Filter

[butterblum]

I was wondering if anyone has come up with an effective way to avoid transferring hops through a chiller, while also filtering out the resulting cold break material from using a gravity-fed counterflow chiller.
I just used my custom chiller for the first time this weekend; it chilled very well. I tried a manual whirlpool, but had no success keeping the hops in the kettle. I have a plain diptube picking up from the bottom-side of the kettle. Luckily, I had the output of my chiller dumping into a strainer above my fermenter (which got totally clogged up by all of the hops). I seemed to transfer a lot of junk into the fermenter and wanted to know how to cut back on this.
Thanks

 

[BGHSmt7]

I've seen folks use a stainless steel scrubby pad shoved around the dip tube which helps catch a lot. If you have a drill, try connecting a plastic brewing spoon or mash paddle to it and spin it for a good 20 seconds on high, then wait 10-15 minutes before draining.

 

[IslandLizard]

Use a hop spider or fine mesh hop bags to contain most of the (coarse) hop fiber.

During the boil I bag my hops in (very) fine mesh hop bags, and add some weight (a handful of glass marbles) to them to keep them submerged. That keeps all of the larger hop debris contained.

Very fine dust still gets out and mixes with the break. The kettle will drain fine through my 300 micron kettle filter by gravity alone. But the slurry clogs the filter while pumping (recirculating/chilling). The suck from the pump apparently clogs the filter pores shut, so I've removed that filter and recirculate/chill without.

Some of that fine trub stays in my plate chiller, but it backwashes out well. It's the coarse hop pulp (which is in the bags now), the flakes, that would clog it.

Using a counterflow chiller you have a much larger, easier cleanable passage, so a little sludge will be fine.

Chill/drain the wort into a sanitized bucket, put a lid on it and let it stand for an hour or 2 to let the trub sink to the bottom. Pour the now clear wort into another sanitized bucket, leaving the last gallon or so of trubby wort behind.*

Oxygenate and pitch your yeast into your now mostly clear wort !

* I'm very frugal when it comes to sweet wort, especially the high gravity and boiled ones, so trust me, that leftover trubby wort from the first bucket gets reclaimed and used. I filter it through a well sanitized fine mesh hop bag and add it to the wort in the fermentor to make my volume. If you don't trust your sanitation practices, you can re-pasteurize that strained wort at 160F for 1 minute. Then chill and add to your fermentor.

 

[govner1]

I whirlpool, then whirlpool & chill. I rarely get much trub in my fermentors & so far (4+ years) I haven't clogged up my pump or CFC.
After each brew I rinse my pump & CFC w/about 6 gal of hot Sani-Clean.

 

[schematix]

hop spiders are highly effective, but in my experience it drastically reduces the utilization of the hops. to me it was so bad i bought an immersion chiller.

 

[IslandLizard]

hop spiders are highly effective, but in my experience it drastically reduces the utilization of the hops. to me it was so bad i bought an immersion chiller.

Hah! Maybe we can put some numbers to that?

There are 2 ways to "read" utilization. The most common would be bittering but there's also general hop extraction of course, the various oils, flavor, and aroma compounds. As long as they make it out of the bag there shouldn't be that much difference compared to free swimming kettle hops.

I use a wooden paddle to squeeze/massage the hop bags every 5-10 minutes while they're submerged in the boil. I don't think either side of utilization suffers all that much. No?

 

[schematix]

Hah! Maybe we can put some numbers to that?

There are 2 ways to "read" utilization. The most common would be bittering but there's also general hop extraction of course, the various oils, flavor, and aroma compounds. As long as they make it out of the bag there shouldn't be that much difference compared to free swimming kettle hops.

I use a wooden paddle to squeeze/massage the hop bags every 5-10 minutes while they're submerged in the boil. I don't think either side of utilization suffers all that much. No?

I don't have an easy way to measure and thus put "numbers" to it. The only tool i have is my tongue, which i think is better trained than average.

It told me that bagging hops kills about half the bitterness and 75% of the aroma/flavor. I used a hop spider for a lot of batches and could never figure out why all my beers were so hop flat. Then i made a beer with just a few oz (my system when i had the plate chiller could tolerante ~3oz of pellets before it clogs) of hops that i free balled, and well, that was the last time i used the spider.

I don't think flow in and out of the bag is occurring that well since the bag holes are so small, and the hop particles just plug it.

 

[eric19312]

I don't have an easy way to measure and thus put "numbers" to it. The only tool i have is my tongue, which i think is better trained than average.

It told me that bagging hops kills about half the bitterness and 75% of the aroma/flavor. I used a hop spider for a lot of batches and could never figure out why all my beers were so hop flat. Then i made a beer with just a few oz (my system when i had the plate chiller could tolerante ~3oz of pellets before it clogs) of hops that i free balled, and well, that was the last time i used the spider.

I don't think flow in and out of the bag is occurring that well since the bag holes are so small, and the hop particles just plug it.

I'm with Schematix. I gave up on my homemade counterflow and bought a decent immersion chiller mainly due to disappointing* hop character in batches I brewed with the counterflow. The two issues I had with my counterflow were need to bag the hops to avoid plugging the chiller (3/8 id copper) and challenge achieving a good whirlpool. I was inspired by Jamil's article on Mr Malty about hop bursting and found it challenging to make the technique work well with counterflow.

*disappointing -- sorry no numbers -- was more issue of flavor and aroma. I was not achieving the in your face hop aroma and juicy/citrus/tropical flavors I wanted out of the American and NZ hops I was using in these beers. Bitterness was fine with either technique.

Now if I have time I will take my imersion chiller out of the kettle and whirlpool for a couple minutes, then shut off the pump, wait 10-20 minutes and then drain/pump to fermenter. Based on quantity of hop sludge left in kettle this is fairly effective--maybe 2/3 of the hop material settles into a cone and doesn't reach the fermenter. If brew day went long and I don't want to wait for the kettle to settle I go direct to the fermenter after the chiller is pulled. Some hop will be left behind in a heavily hopped beer but most goes to the fermenter. The quality of the beer does not seem to be different when I carry all the hops into the fermenter vs just some of the hops.