Worth dumping trub/hops from conical, just before racking?

[Iowa Brewer]

Hi all,

Just finishing my 1st NEIPA and—being new to my Spike CF10 (and conicals, in general)—I didn't dump the trub until kegging day. Lesson learned. For today, is there any point in dumping the trub and dry hops?

Since I'm not collecting yeast and my CF10 has a racking arm to pivot and keep above the junk, it seems like a waste to dump the trub/hops, drawing perfectly good beer into the sight glass & 90-degree elbow's dead-space, which I won't be able to collect.

Thanks for your advice/expertise!

 

[Wayne1]

Typically, I would dump yeast after dropping temps from 65ishF from fermentation to 53F for dry hopping. I do not wish the yeast to interfere with the dry hops.

After dry hopping, I would also pull the hops and what other yeast matter may have settled. I would then draw the beer out from the racking arm. This would result, to me, a cleaner tasting beer.

 

[Iowa Brewer]

Typically, I would dump yeast after dropping temps from 65ishF from fermentation to 53F for dry hopping. I do not wish the yeast to interfere with the dry hops...

Cheers, Wayne1, and that's what I'll do in future.

As stated above, for this question I'm beyond that and am at kegging day (mistake made, lesson later learned, and trying to best proceed from where things are at). Do you have any insights on my current situation? Thanks again!

 

[Wayne1]

Start with your racking arm pointing up. Let any trub that has accumulated in the arm drain out. Start transferring clear beer to your keg. Slowly turn the racking arm down to the bottom of the fermenter. Stop when you see turbid beer flowing through. It does help to have a sight glass between the racking arm and the hose.

Good luck!
Wayne

 

[Iowa Brewer]

Thanks so much, Wayne1!
I'll leave the trub in until after racking and give this a go.
Happy brewing!

 

[couchsending]

Best practice for highly hopped beer:

After fermentation cool to 55/60, wait 24 hours. Slowly remove yeast whether you’re reusing it or not.

Dry hop below 60.

After 2 days dump hops and start cooling

Slowly remove more hops as you’re cooling. One or two more times.

Cold condition for 4-6 days as cold as you can.

Adjust racking arm as necessary.

 

[IC2SS]

Best practice for highly hopped beer:

After fermentation cool to 55/60, wait 24 hours. Slowly remove yeast whether you’re reusing it or not.

Dry hop below 60.

After 2 days dump hops and start cooling

Slowly remove more hops as you’re cooling. One or two more times.

Cold condition for 4-6 days as cold as you can.

Adjust racking arm as necessary.

This is EXACTLY what I did but still took too many losses. 4Gal batch only ended up with 1.7gals! I have Spike CF5 and open valve very slowly. Quite a bit of dry hops/trub remained even after numerous dumps. Just can't seem to get all the trub to setting into the cone and elbow and some beer gets dumped but this amount seems ridiculous! I would only expect to lose 0.5gals after ferm/trub dump not over 2gals!

 

[Gozie Boy]

This is EXACTLY what I did but still took too many losses. 4Gal batch only ended up with 1.7gals! I have Spike CF5 and open valve very slowly. Quite a bit of dry hops/trub remained even after numerous dumps. Just can't seem to get all the trub to setting into the cone and elbow and some beer gets dumped but this amount seems ridiculous! I would only expect to lose 0.5gals after ferm/trub dump not over 2gals!

Pinging this last post to see if others had issues in attempting to dump hops in a SS conical after dry hopping and before cold crashing. I am being as careful as possible not to allow (too much) liquid to break through the hop material while dumping, but after a lot of small dumps over 12 hours (which have added up to quite a lot of volume (about 1.5+ gals out of my 12 gallon batch SO FAR) it seems that I still have a good ways to go. But I just can't get much hop material out before the beer breaks through. Others must have encountered this - so what do you do??
@couchsending