Stuck Boil Kettle

[mjpainter]

Hi all!

I recently got back into homebrewing and decided to do an 11gallon batch with a friend who I plan to split the batch with. Anyways, at flame out our recipe called for 4oz of Mosaic Whole Cone Hops. After we cooled the wort down to pitching temperature with an immersion chiller we opened up the valve at the bottom of my boil kettle and it ran for a little bit but got stuck. I think in the future I will use a hop screen to help prevent future problems like these. Anyways we resorted to using a sanitized vinyl tube to siphon most of the wort off but the tube inevitably got clogged by hop leafs. At that point we still had 5 gallons of wort left so we lifted the boil kettle and poured everything into our glass carboy using a funnel.
Now for my question: Every bit of hop and trub from the boil made it into our fermenter. It looks marvelous bubbling away but I'm worried all this hop debris will make the hop character overwhelming. Can I just rack the beer over to a secondary fermenter after primary fermentation has completed? I plan to dry hop in 2 or 3 days anyways. Should I be worried at all about all this hop debris and trub in the fermenter???

?

 

[VikeMan]

IMO, having all that trub in the fermenter is not ideal. If you are planning to dry hop, then I think secondary makes sense under the circumstances.

How do you plan to rack? i.e. you'll need some sort of racking screen between your racking cane and those hops to avoid having the same issue all over again. If you don't have one (and if you did, you probably would have used it in the first place), you can sanitize a nylon stocking and stretch it over the length of your racking cane. The alternative would be to rack from below the floating hops and lose some beer.

 

[tracer bullet]

You were looking for a hoppy beer, so - you'll get it, LOL. I don't think it'll ruin the beer at all, and if it's too much then let the beer sit warm instead of refrigerated and the character will dissipate a little more quickly. As with almost every brew day, consider it a lesson learned and brew next time accordingly.

 

[Jim R]

I have a nice valve at the bottom of my boil kettle but I don't even use it. Instead, I use an auto-siphon and rack to my fermenter through a "colander" sieve (see below) to keep most of the debris out of the fermenter. This one works well for me because my stainless fermenter has a big upper opening. I think I could also use it with a carboy though by just racking to a sanitized pail first and then pouring it into the carboy. The extra step wouldn't hurt anything and may even add a little extra oxygen to the wort.

https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Kitchen-...0&sr=1-2-12d4272d-8adb-4121-8624-135149aa9081

 

[govner1]

If you plan future brews with just a screen I’d advise putting a copper tube (holes drilled in it) on the inside that is connected to your outlet. Too much Hop debris and trub will collapse the screen and you’ll have a similar situation.