How to help hop-cake not "melt" after whirlpool (during knockout)?

[olie]

I have a plate chiller on the output of my boil kettle, on the way to fermentor. I don't have any special way to cool the boil kettle, other than that, so the wort is hot in the boil kettle.

My current whirlpool (15 min spin, 15 min to stop spinning) drops things to the 190°F-ish range, but I always feel like maybe the hops-ring would hold together better toward the end of knockout* if it were a bit cooler before I started (knockout).

* Currently, it does well until near the end but, once wort drops below the cake, the nice blob of hops in the center starts to "melt away" and I lose a lot of wort as the cake starts to enter the siphon and I have to cut things off early.

Other than "spin for 30, wait for 30" or similar time extensions, what are some options for helping the cake hold together better?

NOTE: Adding Irish moss or similar to the whirlpool has the undesirable effect of clogging my plate chiller, so I don't want to add things that will cause that problem.

Thanks!
~Ted

 

[3 Dawg Night]

I'm intrigued. What are you calling the "hops ring"? That's not a term with which I'm familiar.

 

[olie]

I mean the ring of hops that forms in the center of my whirlpool, around the heating elements. "Hops ring", "hops cake", "blob of hops" -- I don't know what that's properly called.

("Ring" because it forms a ring -- a sort of "big hops doughnut" -- around the center of the whirlpool, with the heating elements sticking up through the center of the "doughnut hole". (Also probably not really what it's called ))

 

[kevin58]

I mean the ring of hops that forms in the center of my whirlpool, around the heating elements. "Hops ring", "hops cake", "blob of hops" -- I don't know what that's properly called.

("Ring" because it forms a ring -- a sort of "big hops doughnut" -- around the center of the whirlpool, with the heating elements sticking up through the center of the "doughnut hole". (Also probably not really what it's called ))

Whirlpooling usually creates a cone in the center of the kettle. Your heating element is interfering with the natural tendency to form that cone and giving you the doughnut effect but it should probably still be called a cone.

 

[JohnDBrewer]

I use a keggle on propane, so no heating elements in the way. At knock/flame out I use my spoon and create a whirl pool for 30-seconds, then let it rest for 20-minutes. I also put a fan pointing at the kettle to try to start cooling. I brewed a 10g batch yesterday and the fan, after 20-minutes, only dropped the temp to 195. Since I use a keggle to boil in, the valve out for the hot wort is an inch+ up on the side of the keg. The inside intake drops down inside the keg, but stops before the keg starts to slope, if that makes sense. That leaves about a 1/2 gallon of liquid i cannot drain out of the keg unless i tip it. The point of my description is this leaves the hop cone undisturbed when I start my pump and pull wort to my plate chiller. The downside is I leave 1/2 gallon of wort behind (and a pile of trub and hop material.) My brew house efficiency is about 68% because of leaving that much wort behind on a 5g batch. I build that loss into my Beersmith equipment profile.

If you want to leave your hop cone/ring intact and not draw excess trub into your plate chiller, try leaving more wort behind.

 

[Broken Crow]

I highly recommend and 'oversize' filter on the diptube or at least a hopstopper;
https://shop.theelectricbrewery.com/collections/hop-stopperI made my own pillow-filter with 420 SS mesh, sewn with 304SS thread:

..works great in the bottom of my keggle even with the cone sitting on top.