Fermenter Techniques

[John1S]

I recently got a conical fermenter and have used it for four or five batches. Typically I ferment a beer for four or five days at the target temp say for example 68F. Then when fermentation is finished I up the temp to 70 to allow the yeast to clean up. At this point I have been dumping the trub and transferring the beer. It occurred to me that I now have the flexibility to dump trum at any point. I can wait until just before transfer or dump at the time I up the temp or dump every day or two. The mess at the bottom certainly doesn't add to the beer so It seems to me I should be dumping every couple of days. How do others handle this? thoughts?

 

[whovous]

I have roughly the same number of batches in my conical. I feel as though if I am dumping trub all the time, I am also dumping a lot of beer. My batches aren't big enough for that. One thing I do want to try is to hold off on pitching the yeast until the beer has spent several hours in the fermenter; i.e. to do the first trub dump before pitching.

 

[John1S]

Thank you, my fermenter does ok at holding temps but is slow to drop them significantly. Since my heat exchanger cant really get to the fermentation temps without using way too much water I typically cool the wort to about 80F then let it sit overnight in fermenter to get to my pitch temp. It makes sense that there would be some mess left over from the boil that could be dropped just before pitching. I will try this.