Wort Transfer Help?

[alee]

I have been plagued with the same problem since I started brewing several years ago. Getting the wort to the carboy without plugging things up. I have been using a homemade Stainless braid screen (about 3 feet long) attached in a circular fashion to a copper dip tube on my kettle. I am brewing 10 gal batches, all grain and using hop pellets in hop bags. I pump from the kettle valve and chill with a counterflow chiller. The problem is that the hop bags don't hold all the fines of the hop pellets in during the boil and these fines and other trub clog my braid and slow the pump. I have to continually rub the braid with my plastic paddle to keep the flow.

There has to be a solution to this as I'm sure others have had this problem.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[conpewter]

I have always hated pellet hops for that reason. I use leaf hops so I can strain them out easily (I have a false bottom on the kettle) A stainless steel scrubby on the end of your dip tube works just as well when dealing with whole hops though.

People that use pellet hops will generally whirlpool (stir the wort and leave for 10-15 minutes and the hop trub all settles in a cone in the middle) or they'll just put the hops in with the rest of the wort and let it settle out in the fermenter. Some other filters have been created and can work, but take a lot of surface area.

 

[Catt22]

Ditch the screen and bag the hops. Fish out the bags before you begin draining the kettle. I use a false bottom and toss the hops into the kettle without bagging them. Sometimes I use pellets, sometimes whole hops and sometimes both. When chilling I pump through a CFC and back to the kettle in a continuous loop. When sufficiently cooled, I do the whirlpool thing, stop the pump and wait 10-15 minutes for any suspended debris and trub to settle out. After that I pump the wort slowly to the fermenters. The wort runs very clear to the fermenters as it gets filtered by the hop debris that accumulates on the false bottom. Been doing it this way for some time now with good results.

 

[Hammy71]

I stir like crazy while cooling to get most of the residue in one location. I also do 6 gallong batches so I can leave alot of the gunk on the bottom of the kettle. But, it really doesn't matter if it gets in your carboy....it may actually help.