I'm leaving a LOT of beer in the brew kettle--help

[RM-MN]

I noticed you say you brew in an aluminum kettle. Just my two cents.......aluminum can impart a lot of undesirable flavors in your beer. I would recommend brewing and mashing in 100 percent stainless steel.

I call bull! A properly conditioned aluminum kettle imparts no flavor.

 

[Malticulous]

Myths never die.

 

[BetterSense]

What does properly conditioned mean?

 

[Grinnan5150]

I would like to know how you condition an aluminum kettle also. I brewed in one once and my beer tasted like I was drinking metal

 

[Malticulous]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/faq-aluminum-pots-boil-kettles-49449/

 

[bigbeergeek]

Deleted. Redundant.

 

[frailn]

I brew with the BIAB method in an aluminum turkey fryer pot. It's simple, cheap and effective. I don't worry about trub. Here is what I do.

1. BIAB mash in the kettle with a mesh bag.
2. Pull the bag, drain and squeeze. Then do the boil, add hops directly to the wort, no hop bags or spiders.
3. Chill the wort with an immersion wort chiller.
4. Line my fermenter bucket with a paint strainer bag purchased from the hardware store.
5. Dump the boiled, chilled wort into the fermenter bucket.
6. lift the paint strainer bag to drain. It captures all the hop trub.

Yes, all the grain trub goes into the fermenter bucket!
No, it does not cloud by beer!

The only cloudiness I ever get in the finished product is chill haze and that is because I have been using floor-malted grain like Maris Otter or Golden Promise without a protein rest. Nor have I been cold-crashing or using gelatin. But, I plan on using these methods to get rid of chill haze.

When the finished product is room temp, it's clear as a bell.

So, one last hurdle to clear for the perfect beer for me and this is dealing with chill haze.

I just don't see any reason to leave behind beer in the kettle because of the cold break. It does not seem to affect my final product.

And there are no aluminum off flavors.

 

[BetterSense]

I discovered a way to overcome chill haze: Drink the beer warm. It saves space in the fridge too.

 

[crackhead7]

The one thing I didn't see mentioned was that not only is trub good for your yeast, having that protien in your fermentor helps attract, coagulate, and compact the other fine Protiens floating in your fermentor.

 

[RM-MN]

I discovered a way to overcome chill haze: Drink the beer warm. It saves space in the fridge too.

I drank an oatmeal stout tonight and it had been refrigerated for 3 days. At first it was not bad but as the meal wore on and I continued sipping while visiting, the beer warmed up a bit an WOW! all of a sudden I realized that the beer had a different flavor that had been hidden when the beer was cold.

 

[crackhead7]

Stouts in my book shouldn't be severed any cooler then 50-55 degrees

 

[BetterSense]

Update; the beer in the pictures from the beginning of the thread has been bottled and is drinkable now. It's probably the clearest beer I've brewed. I also didn't do a secondary on this batch, and I didn't use gelatin.

 

[LowNotes]

Awesome, glad it worked out! Thanks for starting this thread and follwoing up, it convinced me to definitely use Whirlfloc in my future BIAB beers as well, which is something I have been very indecisive about.

 

[BetterSense]

Actually I was wrong...this latest super-clear beer is the second beer I have brewed with the "Dump everything in the fermenter" method. For this latest beer, I'll have to check my notes as to whether I used whirlfloc or not, but I definitely didn't use gelatine or secondary.

 

[mcaple1]

That's not correct; I have always used buckets and was using buckets when I started this thread. I was always worried about dumping all the break material into the fermenter. Now that I am using a glass fermenter and I can see that it all seems to settle out, I'm more comfortable just siphoning all but the 'real' trub on the very bottom of the kettle into the fermenter, which means I will get another 10-15 bottles per batch.

I ma really confused when people say that they get more beer when they leave the trub in the kettle. Why would you get more beer than me when I just dump everything in. It's not like trub is a magical black brewing vortex that eats beer inside of your fermenter....it settles out and then you rack your beer off it. Confused confused confused.

 

[iijakii]

Because their siphon technique is subpar.

 

[mcaple1]

That doesn't answer my question at all dood.

 

[iijakii]

Why not?

A lot of people say they get more beer if they leave trub in the kettle because then it's easier to rack from primary. They don't kick up as much trub and can siphon more of the clean beer. Same reason many people are such advocates of hop bags when dry hopping.

 

[mcaple1]

This is a bunch of malarchy....."10-15 bottles per batch"...I dump everything in my fermenter and I never leave behind 10-15 bottles behind when racking. In fact, when I use a super flocc yeast like S-04, that trub/yeast cake is so solid that I can get nearly every last drop of beer out. I'm not sure what kind of yeast/trub cake you guys are dealing with, but I've never had an issue with it. Do not fear the trub..it is your friend.

 

[BetterSense]

Thank you for your input. If you had read the thread, you would see that I came to that conclusion several pages ago.

 

[bigbeergeek]

Thank you for your input. If you had read the thread, you would see that I came to that conclusion several pages ago.

We're dealing with a professional here, gentlemen.

 

[tennesseean_87]

4. Line my fermenter bucket with a paint strainer bag purchased from the hardware store.
5. Dump the boiled, chilled wort into the fermenter bucket.
6. lift the paint strainer bag to drain. It captures all the hop trub.

+1 I mash in paint bag then line fermenter with it to filter out hops and whatever else. I squeeze this bag, too, because there is a lot of liquid left.

 

[BrewMU]

First, do you have a ball valve on your pot? That eliminates problems with clogged siphons. I have a tube filter attached to mine, then run it through a screened funnel - it keeps out chunks, but lets wort and presumably trub through. I figure that anything not in solution should be filtered out, if possible. I find that the hops (leaf) act as a kind of first filter - I just tilt the pot at the end and get every bit.
I'm going to make a wild guess - you use pellet hops, right? They create an ooze/cloudiness that leaf hops don't.
There's no way you should lose more wort than the few ounces soaked into the hops - that's beer, man! Horrible things happen to people who waste that stuff - like running out of beer, for instance.

 

[dcarter]

I poured my brew kettle whole hog through a common kitchen collender until I bought a 30 gallon pot and installed a bazooka screen today... Its a great way to aerate too!
Trub won't hurt your beer as long as you ferment in primary for at least 2 weeks, and move it into a secondary fermenter, your beer will be clear. Don't throw out 2 gallons of beer!

 

[phuff7129]

I use irish moss last 15 minutes of the boil, dump it all in the fermenter. If I am using medium flocculent yeast its clear but with a little haze to it. High flocculant yeast comes out very clear.

Just remember, Beer is like Sex. The worst I ever had was pretty good!

 

[jholen]

I use irish moss last 15 minutes of the boil, dump it all in the fermenter. If I am using medium flocculent yeast its clear but with a little haze to it. High flocculant yeast comes out very clear.

Just remember, Beer is like Sex. The worst I ever had was pretty good!

Brewed some beer with water from a garden hose, and it was duly named Garden Hose IPA/Garden Hose Hef.

Using your analogy, I don't think Sex with a garden hose would be very good at all (though I have never tried)!

 

[RandyAB]

My wort looks like giant egg drop soup as well. Initially I thought I was pulling the trub off the bottom on the kettle. Now I'm thinking that most of the stuff is cold break protein. My counter flow chiller takes me from 200f to 60f instantaneously so I think that precipitates everything out effectively. It all settles pretty quickly and the beer is clear.

 

[Gate76]

I've been brewing for over 5 years and probably brewed 30 batches at this point. No fancy equipment, just the standard 6 gallon boiling pot, plastic bucket fermenters and glass carboys. At the outset (first 5 or 6 batches) I strained out the trub (95% of it at last) and fermented the strained wort. Then I read something somewhere that leaving the trub in was not deterimental to the product. So, I then started leaving it all in (pouring between brew kettle and fermenter to aerate the wort) and it all ends up mixed in the wort in the fermenter. There was absolutely no change in the taste of the resulting brew, certainly nothing deterimental to the taste. The trub settles out after two weeks of fermentation and nothing makes its way into the secondary when the transfer occurs. The resulting brew, after two more weeks of secondary, is very clear everytime (except for the wheat beers of course).

Save the step and the time and don't go to the effort to strain/remove the trub. The resulting brew will be just as good.

 

[45_70sharps]

Yep, dump it all.
I've got to get myself a good, large funnel with a strainer to help with any hop bits but I don't worry much.
You will see it settle out better in the fermenter and you will get most of your beer that way.
If you are worried about it sitting on that stuff, give it some time and when it's settled out better transfer it to a secondary.