Filter for boil kettle tap.

[Wyo_brews]

Recently put a valve on my 5 gallon boil kettle in order to flow hot wort through my plate chiller I got for pennies on the dollar. However I am curious whether or not adding a filter to the valve on the inside of the kettle is necessary or if allowing the hop and grain trub to run through the chiller is the way to go. Anyone with a similar set up have any advise? I had considered a stainless braid filter but it seems as though this will get clogged given that I use pelletized hops and at the moment I cannot afford a pump so I have to gravity feed the wort.


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[rgauthier20420]

I wouldn't gravity feed your plate chiller with hot break and hop trub. You should have some sort of screen to at the very least keep the hop trub in the pot. A bazooka on the inside is 1 of many ways, but I've read of people having that get clogged. Personally, I use a make shift hop spider I put together with a 3" PVC coupler, some screws, a wooden dowel, and the 5 gallon paint strainer bags from HD. Cost all of like $5 to make and it works perfect.

 

[kombat]

I use a "HopStopper" on my outlet valve. It's basically a pickup tube, shrouded in a frisbee-shaped stainless mesh. This prevents break material from making it out the valve.

In addition, I use a hop screen (cylindrical stainless mesh container) to contain my hops during the boil. The combination of these two things prevents anything from getting out of the kettle and into my chiller. However, the one time I tried skipping the hop screen and just threw my hops directly into the kettle, the HopStopper got clogged and I lost siphon on my tube during chilling. Actually, even when I *do* use the hop screen, sometimes with 10-gallon batches with a lot of break material, the HopStopper can still get clogged, choking off the flow of wort. On a couple of occassions, I've had to continuously scrape break material off the HopStopper (using a sanitized stainless steel spoon) while chilling in order to keep things flowing.

But nothing makes it to the chiller, which is priority #1. It's not like I can open that thing up and give it a good cleaning, so it's important to prevent hop and break material from ever getting in there in the first place.