Noob... Was I suppose to strain the wort before putting in the fermenter?

[HibsMax]

I use an old, sanitized, two-quart saucepan to scoop the wort out and pour it into the strainer.

I usually use a stainless steel mesh strainer which I sanitize by boiling for the last 15 minutes (I don't trust chemical sanitizers to permeate every crevice in the mesh). The first time I used the stainless strainer plus the finer plastic strainer in my funnel. This gets a lot of the little stuff, but even with two-stage straining is rather slow. I'm now leaning toward just the single straining, or no straining at all, depending on my mood and what I'm making.

If you're going to take the strain approach, why not use muslin bags? I know some people worry about hop utilization but I make sure that I don't stuff the hop pellets tightly at all. I use a small mulsin bag and I tie the knot as near to the end as I can allowing maximum expansion. I still pour through a strainer and since most of the material is in a bag (or bags), the strainer remains clear enough to pour all at once.

 

[zeg]

If you're going to take the strain approach, why not use muslin bags? I know some people worry about hop utilization but I make sure that I don't stuff the hop pellets tightly at all. I use a small mulsin bag and I tie the knot as near to the end as I can allowing maximum expansion. I still pour through a strainer and since most of the material is in a bag (or bags), the strainer remains clear enough to pour all at once.

I tried one once, but it didn't seem to do much good. It may have been too coarse a bag, but enough of the hops seemed to find their way out into the wort anyway that it didn't save much trouble.

Even with a finer bag, the stuff that clogs the fine in-funnel strainer is going to escape freely, so I'm just not going to bother with that. For the stainless steel strainer, that is easy enough just to dump out a couple times if it clogs.

FWIW, I'm not concerned about utilization, I just don't like to bother with extra equipment. Particularly disposable or must-wash equipment.

 

[HibsMax]

I tried one once, but it didn't seem to do much good. It may have been too coarse a bag, but enough of the hops seemed to find their way out into the wort anyway that it didn't save much trouble.

Even with a finer bag, the stuff that clogs the fine in-funnel strainer is going to escape freely, so I'm just not going to bother with that. For the stainless steel strainer, that is easy enough just to dump out a couple times if it clogs.

FWIW, I'm not concerned about utilization, I just don't like to bother with extra equipment. Particularly disposable or must-wash equipment.

I don't use the smaller strainer, just a large one and that catches some stuff which must leak out of the muslin bags a little. The only thing I don't like about the bag approach is throwing out the bags. I know you can wash them, and I know there are alternatives, but I have big bags of muslin bags so I am using them for now.