First All Grain Batch

[wtrfwlnut]

So I made my first all grain batch last Sunday. I went for a Bells 2 Hearted IPA. It took me all day and I was pretty tired at the end of it. I need to work on technique apparently. I nailed the OG at the end of the boil however so I was pretty stoked about that.

So when I got it into the fermenter and pitched and was able to relax a bit while the magic happens, I thought of a couple things that might be concerning.

First, When I transferred from the mash tun to the boil kettle, I was significantly low on water. For strike water, I used 40oz of water for every LB of grain. Boil target was 7 Gallons and I used 4.6875 gal of strike water. When I drained it into the kettle, I had less than 3 gallons. So I did a rinse of the grains with 4 gallons of 170 degree water for about 10 mins. I was still short! So I repeated the rinse process with just over what I was short and got to the 7 gallons after the second rinse process. - Lesson learned: Always going to lose some water in the mash process so increase the volume of the rinse water next time.


So after boiling for 60 mins and the hop additions, I was at the target 6 gallon batch volume. The boil and flame out hop additions added up to about 3 oz total of Centennial Hops. When I transferred from kettle to fermenter I used a funnel with a strainer and clogged the strainer so bad that I had to stop and clean it twice while transferring.

My question: Did straining out all of that sediment/hop particulate hurt the flavor of my beer? Should I have left all of that in there and worried about getting out all of the particles when I went to keg? I'm trying to make the beer as clear, with the least amount of haze, that I can. I do plan to cold crash and I know there are other ways to make the beer more clear with gelatin and such, I was just trying to get out as many particles as possible before hand. I do plan to dry hop so I'll be adding more stuff to the beer, perhaps my straining wasn't necessary but I'm hoping it didn't hurt anything.

Any opinions on this are welcome.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[enkamania]

I personally dump everything in, it will settle to the bottom.

 

[Pariah3j]

So the trub at the bottom of the kettle, from what I understand can be left there, some people do whirlpools to cause that to cake up in the center, so not as much gets into the fermenter. I use to leave most of this in the kettle by using an auto-siphon to siphon the wort into the fermenter. Far as I know, as long as the funnel and strainer were sanitized that should do about the same thing. But I don't think it hurts things one way or another - trub or no trub in the fermenter.

 

[rupert130]

I do not filter from boil kettle to fermenter. All of the hot and cold break and hop material seems to settle out as the yeast activity diminishes and flocs out. With the addition of a cold crash and gelatin, I routinely transfer very clear beer to my kegs.
I do not believe you have hurt your beer in any way by filtering the material out though.

 

[kh54s10]

I tried straining my first couple of brews. I quickly got over that crap! I now use a 5 gallon paint strainer bag, clipped to the lip of my boil kettle. Each hop addition goes into the bag so most of the debris is contained. After that all but the last few ounces of the thickest trub goes into the fermenter. The deepest trub layer I have had in my fermenter was probably less than 1/2 inch. Less loss of my precious BEER!

I never use the called for amount of sparge water. I find it much easier to measure what came from the first runnings, measure the volume then I sparge with about 1/2 needed to get to pre-boil volume, measure again then sparge with the rest. This leaves very little wort left behind in the grain, and makes the tun lighter to carry to the compost heap.

No harm has been done to your beer. In fact for a first all grain batch your brew went amazingly well.

 

[C-Rider]

Straining will NOT hurt. I make small 2 gallon batches in 2 gallon buckets from HD and can't afford to have that trub taking up space. I need to get as much wort into the fermenter as I can.

 

[wtrfwlnut]

Thanks for the replies. I just thought leaving in all the parts that I strained out might add to flavor. I'll be dry-hoppong as I mentioned also so hopefully that will make up for anything that might have been lost straining.

On the sparge - I'm kind of confused on why I would steep the grains with only 40oz per lb of grain with a batch that calls for 7 gallons of boil volume. Does it dilute the wort too much if you just steep with the whole 7 gallon boil volume plus a little more for what gets absorbed by the grains and not released?

Seemed kind of laborious to have to add 170 deg water to the spent grains twice after the original steep to get to my boil volume...But, it worked as I hit my OG. First time I nailed it right on the number. Previous batches deviated a little but still tasted good.

Anyway, had a vary vigorous fermentation going on so things look good!