How to minimize trub in secondary/bottles?

[bbriscoe]

Last night I racked an oatmeal stout into my carboy. I use a clear plastic racking cane with a little black detachable tip on the end that is supposed to keep the cane off the bottom trub in the fermenter. I also had trub floating at the top when I finished.

what is the best way to get as much liquid as possible without taking the nasty stuff too? My line eventually plugged up and I lost the siphon. I had probably 20-24 oz of liquid left (plus several lbs of solid trub) which I poured off into a glass to let settle.

The stuff from the bottom tastes sweeter/stronger than what I first sampled at the top before racking. Is that normal? How much volume is normal to lose when racking?

also, I've thought of using a cheesecloth to filter the liquid as I rack it - either to carboy or later to bottling bucket - however does that remove the yeast - meaning I couldn't get it to bottle carb?

 

[Revvy]

Not if you are bottle conditiong beers with priming sugar. Any bottle conditioned beer will have sediment. It's a natural byprodcut of living beers. You add sugar to yeast in a bottle to make the beer carb, you will have sediment. Even in many commercial microbrews. That's how we harvest the yeast.

No good beer, micro or homebrew should be drunk out of the bottle. We're not talking little flavored pizzwater here like bud light. Good beer has flavor and aroma that can't be truly appreciated coming out of a nickle sized hole.

Do yourself a favor and pour your good beer in a glass heck, even a plastic cup is better than drinking it out of the bottle. And do it right and leave the sediment behind by pouring to the shoulder.



But some tips. I find that leaving my beers in primary for a months helps to have less sediment in the bottles. Since I have a tight yeastcake, I can pretty much vacuum the beer off of it, and therefore there is only the barest minimum transfered to the bottling bucket needed to carb the beer. In fact I actually rub my autosiphon across the bottom once to make sure I have plenty to do the job. Because of this, I tend to get 48 to 54 bottles from a batch. And only a tiny bit of sediment.

Additionally, the longer you chill the beer in the fridge, the tighter the yeast cake. I had a beer in the back of my fridge for 3 months, that I could completely upend and no yeast came out. Longer in the cold the tighter the yeast cake becomes. Even just chilling for a week (besides getting rid of chill haze) will go to great lengths to allow you to leave the yeast behind, but with only a minimum amount of beer.

Bottom line though, great beers often have yeast in the bottle, because they are bottle conditioned. They are alive rather than those pasturiezed and filtered "dead beers" like Bud, Miller Coors.

So rather than hating it, learn to embrace it.

 

[bbriscoe]

I don't hate the yeast/haze if that's all it is, (though some of my friends do) but last night I poured a DFH 90 IPA clone into a glass and ended up chewing on some malt/wheat bran - you know the skin part on the outside of the wheat kernel. Not sure how that got in there. But I guess I don't want to use a filter.

good videos BTW. Thanks

 

[RM-MN]

I have a racking cane holder that clips to the side of the fermenter bucket. I push the racking cane to the bottom of the bucket and then adjust the holder so that the racking cane is held an inch off the bottom. As the level of the beer approaches the end of the racking cane, I tilt the bucket slightly so I only leave a tiny bit of beer in the bottom and get very little sediment into the bottling bucket (no secondary). When I bottle, most of the sediment that I do get into the bottling bucket usually stays there in the bottom.

 

[broadbill]

Last night I racked an oatmeal stout into my carboy. I use a clear plastic racking cane with a little black detachable tip on the end that is supposed to keep the cane off the bottom trub in the fermenter. I also had trub floating at the top when I finished.

what is the best way to get as much liquid as possible without taking the nasty stuff too? My line eventually plugged up and I lost the siphon. I had probably 20-24 oz of liquid left (plus several lbs of solid trub) which I poured off into a glass to let settle.

The stuff from the bottom tastes sweeter/stronger than what I first sampled at the top before racking. Is that normal? How much volume is normal to lose when racking?

also, I've thought of using a cheesecloth to filter the liquid as I rack it - either to carboy or later to bottling bucket - however does that remove the yeast - meaning I couldn't get it to bottle carb?

I think you did alright leaving 20-24 oz in the fermenter, you can't get it all withouth pulling significant amts of settled trub/yeast.

The way I (and many others) do it is to scale recipes up so that you are left with 5 gallons of beer at the end of the process.

For example:

Scale recipe to 6 gallons left in the kettle at the end of the boil.
That means 5.5 gallons going into the fermenter (leaving 0.5 gallon in the kettle), then 5 gallons into the bottling bucket/keg (leaving another 0.5 gallon in the fermenter).

 

[NHBeerDude]

I use a 5 gal. paint strainer bag when I'm transferring from my kettle to my fermenter. It catches most of the hot break and hops. When my beer is done fermenting I only have a thin layer of yeast and not all of that other crap as well.

 

[bbriscoe]

wth is a paint strainer bag? sounds like a good idea but I have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[NHBeerDude]

wth is a paint strainer bag? sounds like a good idea but I have no idea what you are talking about.

Go to Home Depot or Lowes and look in the paint section. They have these nylon bags that are made for paint sprayers.

 

[rmedved]

I might be wrong about this, but I would not recommend straining with anything when transferring to a secondary or bottling bucket, it would likely aerate your beer and lead to oxidation problems.

 

[bbriscoe]

I might be wrong about this, but I would not recommend straining with anything when transferring to a secondary or bottling bucket, it would likely aerate your beer and lead to oxidation problems.

He said he did it when pouring out of the brew pot, right? You are supposed to oxidize before adding the yeast anyway, so that sounds like a great idea to get rid of the stray hops. Would you lose any flavor by not leaving the hops in the fermentor?

 

[Msbeer]

Have you noticed the feature of the Better Bottle where the center of the bottom is raised . You just rest your racking cane on the hump and the trub stays in the carboy. I think that's what it is design for.

 

[OHIOSTEVE]

OR you could just cram the racking cane right down in the trub and rack to secondary....cold crash then rack to bottling bucket...virtually zero trub. ( ducks and runs for cover)

 

[mixedbrewer]

I siphon without using a clip and stand there and actually use up 7 minutes of my day making sure I am not on the bottom and avoiding random floating hops etc. I actually enjoy watching it go through the hose and into the secondary (bottling bucket). The more hands on it is for me, the more excited I get about drinking it.