spider v sock -
you're not untying and tying bits with a spider. you turn the garden hose on it when you're done, and it's clean. you can throw 2, 3 or even 16 hop adds straight into the thing without having to bag them up, knot them down and fish them out later. at 200 - 300 microns spider mesh, bugger all hops escapes into the wort, as opposed to any sock i've used. a stainless steel spider is sub $30, and lasts, as opposed to socks which cost about $5 each. if you do 3 hop additions, that's $15 worth of socks that you have to individually load and then clean. and mine always seem to deteriorate at a rate of knots. nah - give me a spider. like going from a copper and stick to a fully automated washing machine. ultimately, though, sock, spider or loose, the hops are still rolling around in the boil. it's just a case of whether or not they're confined to one pocket of the boil environment. bit like a teabag, or loose.
throwing hops straight into the boil in a gf, my experience (and general, from what i can gather) is that the gf filter ain't built for it, (in spite of the demonstration on the youtube videos) so you're going to wind up with a lot of green gunk choking your retriculation system. may be harmless, but if you've got a new gf, it's a bit disturbing when you hear your pump gasping for air. the filter is good for grain and that very modest amount of hops that might escape from a spider, but the whole design is probably not meant to have a flock of hops rampaging around on the loose. better to round 'em up and keep 'em in a paddock. not to mention that they then wind up in your fantastic wort chiller, potentially making it smell like, well, like carniebrew's hopsock boxer things. and we don't wanna drink THAT.
for a one word piece of advice - you'll get a little bottle cap to put on the top of your retriculation pipe to stop grain falling into the pipe as you introduce grain to wort. throw it out. get a chunk of alfoil and wrap that over instead. that does the job perfickly. use the cap and you'll keep bumping it off, then fishing for it in ever hotter wort and greater grain mass.
oh - ps.. i note you're in greenslopes - craftbrewer at capalaba has spiders sub $30. not advertised on their website for some reason, but i got mine after spotting them in the shop one day. (i shop between them and the guys at annerley - i find craftbrewer good for grains and annerley good for everything else)
the other thing is - i'd think about beersmith software - or similar, if only to measure hops input. my first few brews were a bit hit and miss - bland or hopped out. my more recent are just hop balanced stunners. the downside with all this is that i notice that the brews are way green and unbalanced for about 3-4 weeks, so there is a certain amount of tapping the clock and gazing at the calendar before they show their true colours. but man, it's worth it.
but yeah - probably none of us are masters at gf yet - for mine - i just get better each brew on it. there is a learning curve, but it's already consistently churning out the best brews i've done. so enjoy and keep us posted, especially with any discoveries. cheers :icon_chickcheers:
