I have a quick question, I just recently purchased a brew kettle with ball valve and I also bought a filter to go on the inside of the kettle. I am fairly new to brewing and I brewed a batch of IPA last night, I went to rack to primary and I opened the ball valve and all the trub came pouring out. Is there a better way to filter the trub without having to pour into a filter? I looked at the filter inside and it was full of trub. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Filtering Trub from Brew Kettle.
- Thread starter casemuse
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Copbrew133
Well-Known Member
What kind of filter is it? There some options out there. First, on an IPA where you'll have a significant amount of hop material use hop bags or hop spider. This will keep quite a bit away from your screen/valve. Whirlpooling, if an option with your setup will form the trub toward the center of the kettle and away from the valve. You can also cool the wort down to temp desired and then use a cleaned and sanitized racking cane or auto siphon to draw from the top down and avoid the trub and break material that has accumulated altogether. That is how I drew the wort off before I built my new system. I had had a bazooka type screen on my old kettle and it got clogged constantly, I Finally said screw it and auto siphoned it into the primary.
MindenMan
Well-Known Member
You didn't say if you added finings or what temp you brought the wort down to before you put it into your primary. Cooling to pitch temperature settles the trub on the bottom, and if you open the valve very slowly, a minimum amount of trub will come out. I use 5 gallon paint strainers to line my strainer on top of my primary. I have two and I stack them on top of each other. No, they don't stop everything, but a little silt on the bottom of the primary is no big deal, as the beer will get settled before racking again into the bottling bucket. I do realize you said you didn't want to use a filter, but for 5 dollars for 2 paint strainers is pretty cheap and they don't clog easily. But when the filter starts to get full, the trub makes its own particulate filter. It drains very slowly at that point, but if you are not in a rush, you might want to give it a try. Just a thought.
I didn't add finings to it. I cooled it to 75 but it took way to long to cool it with my wort chiller so I have to find a better way to cool it without spending a lot of money. Suggestions for that? And to top it all off I missed my OG by a lot, so I am worried that I may have ruined this batch.
MindenMan
Well-Known Member
Finings really help to get the cleanest wort to the primary fermenter, along with cooling quickly. How long did it take to get down to 75*, and where did the water come from? Did you use a garden hose, or attach to the sink? I have an ice maker in my fridge, and I start collecting ice a couple of weeks before I plan to brew to not have to buy ice. And if you can put your brew kettle into a tub or sink, while using your wort chiller. Btw, what kind of wort chiller do you have? And, what was your OG supposed to be, as opposed to what it was?
MindenMan
Well-Known Member
I have to ask, you didn't pitch yeast at 75* did you?
In Hawaii I always pitch around 75*. Not a problem here. But that's a different topic.
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