primary whirlpooling

[Chase22]

Hey, I'm fermenting my first IPA, and about 3-4 fingers of trub have settled. Every time I take a gravity reading with my thief, a lot of nasties come up with it. I suspect that when the time comes to bottle, I am going to end up with too much sediment.

I was thinking about whirlpooling the beer and letting the trub pile up in a pyramid, so I can more easily take readings from the edge of the carboy. Aeration aside, is there anything negative that can happen? How long will it take to resettle?

Also, I was thinking about cold crashing it while I'm at it. Maybe this will decrease the time it takes to settle? It's been dry-hopping for 3 days.

 

[MalFet]

I think it would be a tough operation to get whirlpooling to pull all of your trub into the middle of a carboy. Why not just gradually lower your racking cane until you almost start pulling trub, and then make sure you don't go any farther?

Besides aeration -> oxidation? I dunno...that sounds like a sufficiently bad thing to me.

 

[SOB_OCDAVE]

I rack to secondary and let it sit for two more weeks. This should allow you to take clean readings with your thief. if you don't have a secondary fermenter, let the primary settle out before taking your sample (3-4 weeks).