Well, a slight update on crazy trub separation ideas...
I didn't do the sand thing, although one of these days I am going to try it just for giggles. But I
have done some post kettle filtration with a fair degree of success. I have a ruined 1micron pleated filter that previously helped me turn cloudy beer bright.. its currently doing no better than making them "less" hazy, so rather than throw it out, it has been demoted to wort filter.
I put it in the housing I use for my water filtration, between the kettle and the plate chiller. The theory being that these puppies also have massive surface area, probably more than you could get with an inside kettle application of any description, and even when obviously not working to capacity, a 1 micron filter is going to get rid of pretty much every last bit of hot break or hops... and as a bonus I can use it as a hop back should I so desire.
I wanted to make sure that it would work, the housing wouldn't melt mid cool and that I wouldn't get any flavour leeching from the plastic, so I did a test brew with 30L of boiling water, 250g of hop pellets and about 150g of carrageenan (to make it a little gummy) no actual wort, but plenty of other stuff to clog it up. And I took pictures... here they are.
A temporary pick-up tube drained the kettle almost to the bottom. No waiting for it to settle,no whirlpool was done, flame out, tap open. Whats left in there just fell to the bottom and stuck of its own accord while the kettle was draining.
Almost the whole thing drained out under gravity, it slowed down at about the 5-6L left mark and I hooked it up to the pump to go the rest of the way, just to see if that would work.. it did. This would be why it slowed down at the end!!! Thats a lot'o'hops
and all cleaned up. A soak in nappisan will restore it to white, not that I care.
A late in the cool sample (just before pump was connected) was taken and cooled for tasting. It was so bitter it was a little hard to tell, but I couldn't detect any plastic flavours at all and the housing took the heat without batting an eyelid.
I tried it out on an actual brew last weekend.. a 21L batch of Irish Red ale to 24IBUs. I fitted a proper all the way to the bottom pick-up and the filter handled the lesser amount of kettle goo with ridiculous ease on gravity alone; and with a little coaxing I lost less than 500ml of wort. Next time I will put a litre or so of cut/chase water into the kettle at end of cool to push the wort completely through the filter and the chiller, and the wort loss will be no more than the actual absorption of the hops.
Recoverable wort all recovered, plate filter safe from clogging and absolutely zero hot break into fermentor. An APA in the next week or two will test its abilities as hopback, but so far at least.. it seems all good.
Thirsty
so I do the same for my tun :lol:
