Need help with BIAB trub.

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eman5oh

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I have an electric biab setup and as of yesterday have brewed 3 batches in it. I am finding that I have excessive trub or sediment in the kettle or transfered over to the primary fermentor. I have attached pics of this. The first batch was a extract batch and not a biab so that one did not have the issue, but the next two did. The first biab batch only yielded 2.6 gallons into the keg when done, due to the loses from a 5 gallon batch size. This was started with 8.5 gallons water to start the batch. I also had a bit of an error with my boil off rate with this one. Despite this the beer came out great. So onto the batch yeserday, I corrected the boil off rate in beersmith and started with 9.2 gallons this time and this workedout about right with about 5.2 gallons of wort after the boil, but I was only able to get 4 gallons because of the sediment. I had abut a gallon of heavy sediment and looks like i have about 1/2 inch or so settled out in the carboy after letting it sit over night, so an other short batch. Could it be the bags I am using are too corse. The first bag I used was a grain bag from my local home brew store. The bag yesterday came from morebeer.com this one https://www.morebeer.com/products/bag-29-brew-biab.html it said it is for biab so I am at a loss for what is going on here can anyone help?
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A quick and easysleazy fix would be to just increase your volumes by a .5 gallon.
But yeah , it could be your bag. Check out Wilserbrewer bags in the sponsors section. Well liked by me and many others on this board.
Another thought, it could be your grind. If you are grinding too fine(flour), you are going to get a ton of gunk that can get through the bag.
 
I use two bags at once to minimize particulate debris. I get 5 gallons of clear beer into the keg from 5.5 gallon batches. It might help.
 
What does the grain look like after its crushed? Perhaps its just too fine and the particles are going right through the baq?
 
With that amount of sediment you might as well just pitch the whole kettle into the fermenter and not leave anything behind.

My last batch had a pint of sediment left behind in the kettle and then another pint of trub left behind in the fermenter at bottling time, out of a one gallon batch. :( still have a gallon into the fermenter though so I got 9.9 bottles out of it.
 
I am at the limit on batch size, I have an 11 gallon kettle and the last batch was 9.2 gallons water and 14 lbs grain. It left only about a 1/2 inch of space before overflow. So I need to work on reducing the sediment. The grains were purchased crushed, one batch from Northern brewer and the other from morebeer.

Grain

IMG_20150328_105536.jpg


Full Kettle

IMG_20150328_152804.jpg


Trub from last batch

IMG_20150328_203448.jpg
 
Here is yesterday's batch, I ran this though a funnel strainer when transferring it and shiphoned off the top. The other one was out the valve on the bottom. A lot less sediment in the carboy but still a gallon short... After my boil I ended with about 5.2 gallons of wort and as you see only 4 of that made it to the fermenter. I am new to this, but it seems like I should be getting more into the fermentor.

IMG_20150329_110337.jpg
 
Looks to me like that bag is way too porous. I'd replace it with a Wilserbrewer bag and go from there. If you want 5 gallons at packaging, plan on 5.5 - 6.0 gallons into the fermenter. You can always do a small sparge if you are short on mash tun volume. And don't worry about kettle trub. Just dump it all in the fermenter. If you allow it to settle and compact in the fermenter, you will get a better yield than if you try to leave some of the trub behind in the kettle due to the fact that it will have lots more time to settle (days vs minutes or, at best, hours).

With the proper bag, you shouldn't have that much trub. I get around .5 gal in a 6 gal batch and I make no effort whatsoever to keep trub out of the fermenter.
 
A couple thoughts....

A finer mesh bag like Wilserbrewers bags (or a bag you make your self from polyester voile fabric) would likely reduce the amount of particulate matter which makes it into the boil. However, if you are buying pre-crushed grains online, there is no way they are crushing so fine that what you are seeing is grain residue. You would need to be grinding to flour and clearly they are not doing that.

Have you let the trub settle after you separate it from the wort? Usually, the trub in your kettle looks solid but is actually incredibly light and fluffy and given time compacts down to nothing. This is one reason why may people just dump everything but the last few ounces of hop gunk into the fermenter.

Have you tried cold crashing your beer once fermentation is complete? This helps further compact the yeast and wort sediment into a tight cake and ensures you can transfer the most clear bear to your bottles or keg.

I personally follow the rules above and crush very fine and never have any issues transferring over the right volume of beer to my keg. I also only have a 10 gallon pot, so I get by with less pot volume than you do. A lot of people see the trub and think it needs to be removed after the boil but in reality it really doesn't need to be. Brulosopher even did an Xbeeriment on this topic recently and found that it made very little difference if any in the final product.

If I was you, I'd get a bag with a finer mesh; transfer to most of your wort to the fermenter and then cold crash when fermentation is complete. I would lay money this solves your issues.
 
Get a bucket and do a dunk sparge. It helps to have hot water, but i have also done it with cold on a whim. Just put a few gallons in the bucket, and when your mash is done lift the bag out and put it in the bucket. Let it sit a while, like 10-20 min while you are starting your boil. Pull the bag to drain wherever you do now, and dump the bucket into the kettle. This way you can get more wort into the kettle to deal with losing volume. Added benefit, you will pick up some effeciency points and volume for minimal extra time and cleaning.
 
After some more reading this morning, it looks like a lot of people that use biab get a lot of trub when using certain types of bags. I am going to try to make a bag from voile fabric to see how that goes and just transfer the entire kettle to the carboy and let it settle out. Using a bucket to do a dunk sparge sounds intesting to get a little more volume. i have been pulling the bag and ringing it out into the kettle and then running up to mashout temp. Would I leave the bag in though the mash out and then do the dunk sparge and add it back once I had the boil going?
 
What does it look like after fermentation and sitting a while? I find that the trub tends to settle and compact after fermentation, especially if you leave some extra time to condition. I also use whirlfloc. I also ferment an buckets, so perhaps I'm less sensitive to it!
 
eman5oh said:
After some more reading this morning, it looks like a lot of people that use biab get a lot of trub when using certain types of bags. I am going to try to make a bag from voile fabric to see how that goes and just transfer the entire kettle to the carboy and let it settle out. Using a bucket to do a dunk sparge sounds intesting to get a little more volume. i have been pulling the bag and ringing it out into the kettle and then running up to mashout temp. Would I leave the bag in though the mash out and then do the dunk sparge and add it back once I had the boil going?
Click to expand...

You could do it that way, sure. When iwas still doing a lot of BIAB with dunk sparging, i would split up the total water volume in half,,,,say 3.5 and 3 gal. If using a bucket though, unless have a way to heat it, i would do more like 75%/25% kettle vs bucket. I eventually went to doing BIAC (bag in a cooler) with a round drink cooler that just had a ball valve and drain pickup. Then I would do my dunk sparge inthe kettle, and mix them. I rarely ever bother with a mashout honestly, but you could dothe mashout basically in the kettle during the dunk sparge. It was a fairly cheap way to do bigger and more efficient batches for not much money. Probably had 45-50$ into the cooler
 
CUrchin said:
What does it look like after fermentation and sitting a while? I find that the trub tends to settle and compact after fermentation, especially if you leave some extra time to condition. I also use whirlfloc. I also ferment an buckets, so perhaps I'm less sensitive to it!
Click to expand...

The first pic in the thread was with wirlfloc and taken at about 1 week into the fermentation, it did not compact anymore than that.
 
I think that may account for a larger yeast cake. More sugar to digest = more yeast cake.

I'm trying to get myself going bottling. ...messing around on the interwebz instead.
 
I use a bag made from Voile material (think window panel). It works great and does keeps my wort fairly clean.

I also do 5.5 or 6 gallon batches and transfer everything from the kettle into the carboy.

My beer is always clean and clear and enough to top off the keg.
 
I've had some issues with trub loss as well, but not nearly as severe as yours. I'm using a Wilserbrewer bag, I use whirlfloc, I do a whirlpool, I don't grind my grain extra fine. I generally make 5.5 gallon recipes and it doesn't quite fill the keg, but you need some headroom anyway.

Something I've done on a few batches of my lager is to drain the kettle into my large glass carboy, let it settle to where the top 5 gallons or so are completely clear, and siphon that into my twin Better Bottle 3g carboys. I get one completely clear batch and the other I always take some of the trub because it seems like such a waste. In the end though they both clear up after cold crashing and I combine them in the keg.

My last batch was an IPA at about 1.070 (I forgot to measure, but pre-boil was 1.064), but it was a 6 gallon recipe. On this one of course it came out larger than expected and went up to the neck of the carboy so I had to dump some just so I had headroom. I let it settle and siphoned off the settled trub. It worked pretty well. This one didn't need to go into the fridge to ferment so I didn't transfer to the 3 gallon bottles and it is happily fermenting at 68 in the big carboy.
 
Are you putting the hips directly in the kettle or using a hop bag? I've had success using a hop spider and bag from wilserbrewer. My trub is minimal. Also started whirl pooling but don't have my technique down yet.
 
It looks more like a problem with water additions. If you're only getting 4 gallon on a 5 gallon batch you should consider changing your brewing process. It might help to mash with 1.5 quarts per pound and then adding water after the mash. Consider doing a small vourlof to pull the grub from the bottom and use the grain bed as filtration. I use the same bag in a keg and while its 2 gallons larger volume I'm not losing a gallon of beer on a 5 gallon batch. I've actually had to adjust for having too MUCH wort left over that I can't out into a fermenter OR a keg after fermentation. The bottom of page 1 looks like a lot of healthy yeast and not trub to me.
 
This may seem too easy but just to be sure... wait longer?

I often see TONS of trub, then it compacts down and mostly disappears after an extra week or two.
 
Magnus314 said:
This may seem too easy but just to be sure... wait longer?

I often see TONS of trub, then it compacts down and mostly disappears after an extra week or two.
Click to expand...

When using Whirlfloc, you get a very fine layer at the bottom that looks like trub but is actually mostly liquid with fluffy proteins suspended. That will completely settle out during a cold crash and isn't really a large volume of solids.
 
I use a Wilser bag and I have lots of trub. But that may be from hopping without a sack.

In the end It doesn't bother me since I strain kettle-to-fermenter and get perfectly clear, trub free wort in the fermenter
 
I get a ton of hop/trub sludge in my kettle from BIAB on a propane burner with a brewbag. I also have a very fine crush and high efficiency though so I just rack my wort out from on top of the sludge, and accept leaving a gallon or so behind in the kettle.
 
odie said:
I use a Wilser bag and I have lots of trub. But that may be from hopping without a sack.

In the end It doesn't bother me since I strain kettle-to-fermenter and get perfectly clear, trub free wort in the fermenter
Click to expand...
Hey Odie, Ok so what is a strain kettle-to-fermenter? Make or buy?
 
Per your original post, you're starting with 9.2 gallons pre - boil and you're down to 5 gallons post boil, correct? How long are you boiling? That's a heck of a loss for even a 90 minute boil.

Or is this 9.2 gallons pre-mash?
 
Russell_brewingbythelake said:
Hey Odie, Ok so what is a strain kettle-to-fermenter? Make or buy?
Click to expand...
you can buy one for a few bucks.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...-fermertor-hop-trub-any-tip-out-there.672387/
here is a thread where I documented some of my filter experiments. First was a large funnel that had a screen that i have had for years. It works but is painfully slow (days). Next I tried my turkey fryer oil filtering cones. Much better but more exposure/risk to the wort.

The clear winner was a standard 5 gal bucket filter/strainer. Available in many micron ratings. Pick a size you think might work good. I already had mine lying around so not sure the size but I already had it for other reasons so that's what I used.

Now I always do the bucket strainer thing. Zero wort loss and pure yeast cake for harvest is my reward. And I do mean ZERO wort loss. The only wort that does not make it into the keg is the wort that goes into the small mason jars with the yeast cake.

I now have to reduce grain amounts from recipes or the ABV gets above target since I don't have to make "extra wort" that gets dumped out with the kettle trub or lost when washing trubby yeast.
 

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