trub filter / screen ? filtering between kettle and pri ?

[odie]

What are opinions on filtering/screening out the residual trub after you have drained the clear wort outta the kettle?

I've never really filtered any beer I've made. I was always under the assumption that "filtering" is what made factory beer blah and filters out a lot of the hop goodness and other such delights from reaching the fermenter. Or is pretty much everything you want totally liquefied in the boil and will pass thru the filter?

I always figured you are just supposed to let the crap settle out naturally and rack/siphon/spigot the clear stuff off and discard the rest. sometimes I'll use a screen if big chunks are coming out.

I've always cooled the wort with a chiller & time and then just let it run out the spigot w/o filtering. The stuff remaining just gets tossed. Same with going from ferm-to-keg or pri-to-sec-to-keg...no filter, just rack down to the spigot line and no further..

Well I finally dumped all the crap from the kettle that I toss out into some jars and watched what happened...then I dumped all that into my screened funnel and let is sit a few hours...I figure it's worth another pint or two...and during that time the ferm is still cooling to pitching temp...from 2 quarts of kettle trub I got 4.5 cups of what looks like good fermentable wort in a few short hours.

so should I be screening/filtering the entire kettle? not just what is above the spigot?

 

[eric19312]

I hear you and sounds like 4 cups maybe is a significant part of your batch. Many don't do any racking at all. They just dump the entire kettle trub and all into a bucket and pitch the yeast. Many people will claim this will cause all sorts of damage to your beer but at the homebrew scale most I am aware of who have set out to prove beer fermented from clear trub free wort is better than beer fermented from high trub content wort have failed. This was the first experiment that pretty much got Brulosophy started and the results were impressive and have been repeated. From memory the beer that fermented on trub ended up fermenting faster, attenuating further and finishing clearer than the beer fermented from clear wort. Tasters (blinded to visual cues) were unable to tell the difference between the batches in a triangle test.

So feel free to dump it all into your fermentor and get that 4 extra cups. The Trub will compact and become part of the compacted yeast cake you might even get more than 4 cups.

But FYI I do try to get fairly clear wort into my fermentor. I am well aware of the Brulosophy research and understand there are contrary opinions and that historically and currently pro brewers do favor clear wort into the fermentor. This issue may be related to shelf life and flavor stability...something not an issue in my home brewery, but I do try to leave trub behind. I aim to finish with 17-18 gallons of wort in my kettle post boil and transfer about 16 gallons into my fermentor. So I'm sacrificing about 1.5 gallons of fermentable beer in order to have somewhat clearer wort in the fermentor. No idea if this is necessary but makes me happy to do it.

What I would not do is mess around with those last two quarts too much. Every manipulation is opportunity to introduce contamination. Either send it directly into the fermentor with the rest of the wort or let it go. 4 cups of beer isn't worth dumping a batch.

 

[bobeer]

I don't filter my wort but I do leave most of the trub behind in the kettle. If you get a good whirlpool going and let it go until it stops on its own you'll be left with a nice circular clump of trub in the middle of your kettle. I have found that this, and cold crashing before packaging, gets the beer pretty darn clear without and filtering or finings.

I used to just dump the whole kettle in the fermentor and let it rip. There was no difference in the beer from what I could tell but it made washing the yeast much more of a chore; which is why I started the whirlpool method... Not so much for the beer but for reusing the yeast when the beer was finished.

 

[odie]

Well did a porter last weekend and dumped the whole kettle in the ferm. Will see how it compares to the ESB that had most all the trub screened out

 

[Brooothru]

I too harvest yeast from my conical (thanks Jaybird for inventing the sanitary yeast dump), so trub-free wort is a goal. After whirlpool and settling I transfer as close to 6 gals. as possible, figuring 1 gal. loss on the cold side, so 5 gal. net into the serving keg.

On the hot side I usually have 3/4 to 1 gal. left in the kettle. I used to just dump it, but one day I got curious how much "good" wort was getting thrown out with the trub. I transferred the leftovers into a gallon jug, capped it, and put it in the beer fridge. By the next morning it had settled and stratified and there was about 1/2 gal. of really clear wort.

It's a perfect speise for krausening if that's your thing, or just dump it in with the (now fermenting) wort to bulk up your volume.

Just be advised that all that cold break and other junk is not very compact, and it will remix unless you pour gently.

Brooo Brother

 

[odie]

old discussion but...that porter I did was very disappointing. It was hazy and never, ever cleared up. Had a "taste of silt" character that I can directly attribute to the suspended whatever...not a pleasant beverage that I wasted whole vanilla bean$$ on and other goodies to the mix...

Strange since some other recent beers where I dumped the whole kettle into the bucket I got nice clear beer...and the ferm cake was not attractive for yeast harvesting...

I will be from now on screening the boil kettle. After IC and settling a while, the spigot is going thru a filter cone or screen into the ferm (happens pretty fast as most the crap has settled). then the dregs below the spigot get collected (about 3 qts) and run thru the same screen (but takes time since it's heavy with crap) and easily nets another 2+ qts clear wort.

The last couple batches I ended up with about 1/2-3/4" of very fine/clean looking yeast cake in the fermenters...basically 1 quart total liquid/yeast cake not making it to the keg.

Now I need to figure out my wort recovery factors in order to adjust recipes and mash/boil volumes.

Pics to follow...

 

[odie]

All the kettle stuff below the drain valve. I recovered about 2 quarts clean wort. You can see the solid trub cake that’s not going in the fermenter

 

[odie]

Post fermenter results of fully screened kettles...very tight and clean yeast cake about 1/2”. Only 1 quart not getting into the keg.

 

[odie]

The entire fermenter leftovers. 1 single quart that looks to be mostly clean yeast cake.

 

[odie]

Same one quart total fermenter remains decanted into 3 half pints of yeast

 

[elfred]

I do your process but use the extra 4 cups or so for cooking up invert sugar.

 

[kh54s10]

I bag my hops during the boil so I don't get a whole lot of trub in the kettle and I leave the last little bit in the kettle. I tried filtering the wort ONCE. That was enough to cure me of that idea.

With bagging the hops and leaving a little bit of the thickest in the kettle, my fermenters look the same as the pictures of the fermenters posted.

 

[odie]

I’ve never bagged anything. Maybe most the kettle trub is hops? Before I always have a huge thick trub cake in the fermenter.

What’s the invert sugar thing?