So sick of Significant trub volume loss!

[copper2hopper]

I am really getting frustrated with what should be "5 gallon" or "10 gallon" "batches" and getting significantly less volume into the fermenter and loosing even more when bottling day comes all because of trub. My last two brew days have been this way where a "10 gallon batch" has only produced 8 gallons of what I thought and saw as crystal clear wort into the fermenters (4 each...I split the batch). I even left a solid three gallons of trub in the BK which I thought was way too much and thought to myself "there's no way anyone else ends up with this much trub from a 10 gallon batch recipe". I can already see that I will loose about another third to one half of a gallon in each fermenter due to even more trub loss and/or yeast cake. That will probably put me at about 3.5 gallons or a little more for bottling from each fermenter.

Now I brewed again today with a "5 gallon batch" Kit and it went just as terrible volume wise and I only ended up with about a smidge less than 4.25 gallons into the fermenter with some pretty heavy trub transferred. I can already tell I will only be bottling 3.5-3.25 gallons.

WTF!?!?! I can't be the only one out here who does my boil hop additions via no and just drops them in. That's the one thing I did different with these two batches but even still when I used muslin bags I still had a lot of trub loss where "5 gallon batches" and "10 gallon batches" aren't that at all. I'm ready to just scale my recipes as "7-8 gallon batches" and that way I will be actually putting five into bottles or kegs.

Any advice or reassurances that I'm not alone would be great.

 

[z-bob]

I have two beers still in the primaries with *lots* of sediment. I'm hoping it packs down tight enough that there's really not much beer lost in there; it's almost all solids. The wine I bottled recently was like that.

At one point, one of the beers was almost half trub, but it settled way down when the beer cleared. (I still see tiny bubbles if I look close enough, so it's not ready to bottle yet)

 

[Yooper]

That just doesn't seem right at all. I mean, we all get some trub, but even with making a 10.5 gallon batch today and using 8 ounces of hops, I got maybe a quart(?) that I left in the boil kettle, and then I'll get 5+ gallons of beer out of each vessel, and I don't strain.

I wonder, do you give the trub a chance to settle and compact? If not, you can transfer all of it to the fermenter and let it settle and compact there. It'll go from large pieces of cold break and hops debris and small pieces of hot break into a compact cake if you give it enough time.

 

[snowtires]

A gallon of trub turns into a half gallon after fermentation according to my carboy.

 

[lowtones84]

Yeah, that seems like an absurd amount of trub to me. I typically strain my wort, and lose probably less than half a gallon from boil kettle to bottles. That all depends on the yeast strain and how well it floccs out though. Do you siphon from the kettle, dump, or have a valve or something?

 

[MindenMan]

I used to have significant loss when racking from the BK to the fermenter, and then from the fermenter into the bottling bucket. I now cool my BK as much as is practical, and let the trub settle. I then strain my wort through two paint strainers stacked on top of each other; it aerates the wort, and I lose maybe 1/4 of 1 cup. Yes, it does take a few extra minutes to do it that way, but to me it is worth it, not losing a gallon or so from the BK to the bottle.

 

[oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer]

I believe what you have been losing is what you are leaving in the kettle. It will compact in the fermenter and cause no problems according to a beerxperment I read about called trub and trubby. I always get 5 or a little more on each batch. 52 to 54 bottles.

 

[JimRausch]

That does sound like an absurd amount of trub.
Are you using Irish moss or Whirlfloc in the boil?
Do you cold crash? Use gelatin?
I use a kitchen colander to filter from BK to bucket and get about 1 qt of trub there, and always get 5.25-5.5 G into the fermenter. After usually 3 weeks fermenting, including 1 week of cold crash and gelatin, I generally get 5 G of product into bottles.

 

[FatDragon]

Best option is to just toss everything in the fermenter and let the trub compact as you ferment. You can strain into the fermenter if you want to catch some of the solids. Another option is to toss the trub from the kettle into a separate (clean) vessel, cold crash, and then decant into the fermenter after a day or two. That should improve clarity, but you'll still lose some beer to trub and you're increasing your risk of infection that way.

I guess there's one more option, and that's just to brew more in each batch. One thing about hitting your volume consistently is to have a good idea of how much beer you're going to lose to trub. If you constantly lose a ton of beer to trub, make more beer and you should be fine.

 

[Foosier]

Seems to me the issue is what you are defining as Trub. You do not need to siphon only the "clear" wort into the fermenter. The cloudy wort is mostly wort and just a small percentage is trub. If you are not bagging your hops there may be a larger percentage that is trub, but mostly you are leaving wort in the kettle.

If you are really worried about trub loss in the kettle, I'd recommend getting a bag for your hops. By this I don't mean the muslin bags. Those don't have small enough holes and they compact the hops keeping them from floating freely in the wort in the bag. Try a paint strainer bag. I get the 5 gallon size from Lowes for less than $5 for a pack of 2-3. they last pretty much forever in my pot. UI just clip the bag to the side and throw the hops in. When I am done, I pull the hops bag out and all that remains is the minor hop dust residue that made it through the very small holes in the bag. I then just transfer all but the muddiest of the wort into the fermenter. The muddy trub compacts under the yeast cake and the resulting beer is crystal clear after fermentation and a cold crash. Also, I do not find any off flavors from this method.

People say don't fear the foam, you should also not fear the trub. Your beer will be clear regardless of what gets in your fermenter.

 

[ruger988]

Sounds like you're jsut afraid of a little trub making it to the fermenter. Dump/rack it all and let it settle out during fermentation as others have said. I don't get too worked up about avoiding it when I rack to bottling bucket/keg either, as every time you move it to a new vessel you're leaving more of it behind, by the time it gets to bottles/keg I'd say I've gotten rid of about 95% of it. Always have nice clean beer (considering its unfiltered) and probably lose a quart or so of wort through the whole process.

 

[copper2hopper]

Yeah I just figured crystal clear wort into the fermenter is best and makes harvesting yeast again very easy. I do usually use hop bags, and strain/aerate through a funnel lined with a paint strainer bag. I tried the whirlpool and settle for 30 minutes or so method with these last two batches. I even auto siphoned from the top down with still that much loss. Anybody ever use pantyhose for hop bags??? I think I might try them.

 

[saccw]

I've always been super fastidious about straining the wort between the brew kettle and the fermenter. The funnel I bought from my LHBS had a fine mesh strainer that fit in the bottom of the funnel. I put the funnel in the top of the fermenter (glass 6.5gallon) and siphoned from the brew kettle into the funnel. It was always the biggest headache of my brew day. The strainer always clogged and I'd have to stop siphoning, stir up the muck in the funnel until the wort drained, then rinse off the strainer and start again for another couple of quarts.

After reading this board, I tried something new on a pale ale I brewed this morning. I first ran the wort through a funnel lined with the nylon mesh bag that I use for BITB. (I'm guessing it's the paint strainer bag that people here refer to although I got mine from morebeer.com) That funnel drained into a second funnel that had the fine mesh strainer that I had been using. I was very surprised to find that the mesh bag caught everything, it was very easy to avoid clogs, and virtually nothing made it to the second strainer, so obviously it never clogged either. I was able to dump the entire brew kettle into this setup and pull out all of the gunk. And did it in a fraction of the time I had been spending. To say I'm thrilled is an understatement.

I think my plan next time is to line my bottling bucket with the mesh bag, pour the entire cooled brew kettle into the bottling bucket, lift out the bag containing all the muck and drain it, then simply use the tap on the bottling bucket to fill the fermenter, probably through the funnel with the fine screen, since I get great aeration that way.

P.S.; Many people I've spoken to say they dump their entire brew kettle into their fermenter, muck and all, with no ill effects. The one time I tried that was the worst beer I'd ever made, and the undrinkable swill got dumped. It was undoubtedly unrelated to putting everything into the fermenter and was only my third brew, and I'm sure I made many other major blunders that day, but I've been superstitious ever since then and have insisted on pre-filtering into the fermenter every time since then.

 

[wobdee]

I lose 1/2 gal out of my 3 gal batches due to trub and yeast cake. I've tried everything I could think of to cut that down but I still end up losing 1/2 gal. Thats why I adjusted my 2.5 gal batches to 3 gal.

 

[Zepth]

I've had my share of both "Clear to fermenter" and "Don't waste a drop" batches. No discernible difference between either method. If I get my target volume into the fermenter and there's some left in the kettle then I think about what to do with the remainder. Freeze it for a starter later? Make a note of what's in there and use it to top-up a batch that didn't quite hit volume? Decide that it just isn't worth it?

I've also had a few times where it looked like my carboy was begging for more and not happy with having some headspace in there. Usually on the higher gravity or higher hopped ones I'll tend to put more gunk into the fermenter. Higher value gunk? Did I really just ask myself that? Yes, I suppose so.

Though there always is one defining question that I ask before deciding to ferment the break and hop material. That one question is: "Will it fit into the fermenter?"

 

[Judochop]

I brew at home and also with a friend at his place, and in both cases, in order to get clear wort into the fermenter, I have to leave a significant amount of wort+trub in the kettle. (I want mostly clear wort going into my fermenter. No 'why' needed. That's just what I want.)

At home I brew 7 gal batches (7g at end of boil) in order to get 5.5 into the fermenter, leaving behind 1.5 gal in the kettle. And still, the last 0.25-0.5 gallons I pull in are wort+muck.

At my friend's house we do 27g batches (27g at end of boil) in order to get 22g into 4 fermenters, leaving behind 5 gal in the kettle. And still... the last gallon or so we pull in is wort+muck.

In both cases, we are working with brew kettles that are probably as wide as they are tall. I wonder how much kettle shape might affect losses to trub? Might I expect less loss to trub working with a kettle that was higher and narrower?

 

[McKnuckle]

As you can see, with this issue - as with almost every other technique - brewers do different things. And they all claim that their way works. And guess what? That's because all of these methods DO work. You should try something different if you're unhappy with your current results.

I also used to strain and filter and whirlpool etc. etc. - and now I just dump the whole thing into the fermenter. (I do isolate my hop trub, but only an extremely tiny amount of liquid is lost there.)

The worst time to leave trub behind (from a volume loss perspective) is in the kettle, because it's all fluffy and floating everywhere. When you dump it into the fermenter, it settles to the bottom and at first occupies a ton of space. Fast forward a couple of days, and it's compacted WAY down. It just does that naturally. So that's the best way to avoid trub-related volume loss. Just rack off of it when fermentation is done.

And it has no negative effect on the beer whatsoever; in fact, there is some evidence that it actually can have a "fining" effect on the beer that assists with clarity, rather than hindering it. Sometimes things aren't as one might expect.

 

[robotinc]

When I switched from a 5 to 10 gallon rig, my process changed such that I now pump into the fermentor not pour through a strainer. I was worried that all the trub and hit break from the beer would affect the taste or clarity of the beer. From my experience all the trub settles out just fine, and the beer tastes and looks great.

What I would do in your place would be to increase the total volume of beer going into the fermentor to 5.5 or 6 gallons. I used to use a blow off tube as you don't have much headspace in the fermentor but was sick of losing beer out the hose. I tried fermcap-s, and that stuff is magic.

 

[Homercidal]

You can adjust your brew to account for the trub. Brew a bit more and you will have more left over after fermentation. Beersmith has a setting for that.

Or, you can simply dump it all in and let it settle. You are probably leaving plenty of beer behind that way.

Or strain some of it as you transfer to primary. The CHUNKS you collect in a fine bag is not really important to the beer at all. Trying to get ALL of it will lead to frustration. Let the really fine particles go through.

 

[oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer]

I can[t imagine dumping a gallon and a half of perfectly good wort down the drain. Don't worry about trub till bottle day. Leave it at the bottom of the fermenter and you will get more clear bear in the end.

 

[ChemEng]

I find that cold crashing the fermenter for a few days helps to turn the yeast cake into a dense sticky mass that doesn't stir up very easily. That helps me to siphon every last drop out without getting much yeast in the keg.

 

[AnOldUR]

Between using mostly whole hops loose in the kettle and only draining clear wort to my fermenters, I easily leave 1½ gallons of wort behind. But scaling up the recipe to account for it gives me the batch size I want. What ever I spend for a few extra pound of grain is gained back many times over in harvesting clean yeast with minimal effort.

From my last 10 gallon batch, three jars with over 8 ounces of clean, dense slurry in each ready for pitching without the time or expense of a starter. IMO, "penny wise, pound foolish" applies here.

 

[McKnuckle]

IMO, "penny wise, pound foolish" applies here.

That might be true if it were indeed costly, or somehow deleterious, to transfer trub to the fermenter. But... it's not. It works just fine and is proven by the many homebrewers who choose that approach.

I prefer "Time is money," which describes how I feel about the effort involved to drain only clear wort to the fermenter. We each have a saying that makes our point.

As stated in an earlier post, ALL of these approaches work, so it's a matter of matching one's values to a process that suits him/her.

 

[AnOldUR]

That might be true if it were indeed costly, or somehow deleterious, to transfer trub to the fermenter. But... it's not.

uhmmmm . . . . . nevermind.

 

[simie]

I understand you're issue. I don't think it matters to the beer however. One batch after whirlpool we transferred about 3 gallons of snotty looking trub yuck. Beer turned out great. Check out the experiment on brulosphy's home page. http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/. Great article

 

[FrozenWinter]

I use to get a lot of trub in the fermentor.
try adding whirlfloc in the last 15 of the boil and then stir the hell out of it in a circular motion after the boil ends. let it sti for about 15 min and then start chilling. keeps most of the hot break and junk in the kettle

 

[BlkWater_brewer]

Hummmm... I usually do 12 gal batches. My mash tun and BK are center drain keggles. I do use a hop spider to reduce excess hop material. I pump from the BK thru my plate chiller into my fermentor, nothing is left in the BK. Never have had a trub issue. I am old fashioned and still use a secondary fermentor almost all the time. Most of my beers are wheat or rye based but I do a few blonde ales for my wife and occasional IPA. Clarity has never been an issue and actual loss is really insignificant. I fill a 10 gal Firkin or 2 cornies and bottle 3 or 4 - 22's. So I may lose 1/2 to 3/4 gallon. Just setup a 15 gal conical, see how this changes things.

 

[Nebula1]

Do you whirlpool your wort after flame out? I let it sit for 20 minutes after boil and it comes out clean. You use whirlfloc tabs?
If you anticipate having losses, boil more wort volume to make up for your losses.
You can try to siphon off the cold break after chilling, you will have much less trub in the fermentation. You could try using a hopback as well.
Hopefully some of this might help. Cheers!