Fermenting on Hot Break?

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Podcast summary from Home Brew Talk here by rhamilton

Wort stability / integrity testing: basically take your wort, jar it at room temps, and see how long it takes to show spontaneous fermentation. If it lasts 2-3 days, it's fairly stable. Make it 4 days and you know you are doing well. Under 2 days and you have too much contamination. Also a great way to troubleshoot suspected infections from equipment. To Trub Or Not To Trub Results: 19 brewers reporting on 20 beers Fermentation: 10 reported better fermentation with trub vs 3 without Visually: 4 liked trub, 3 liked trub-less Nose: 3 liked trub, 3 liked trub-less Taste: 6 liked trub, 7 liked trub-less Conclusion: No conclusive evidence of trub-less beers being better, but trub fermentations are stronger. Host also noted trub beers got clearer more quickly than no-trub brews.
 
The link to the podcast mentioned earlier. (mp3)

So the first thing that struck me was how our North American hosts were pronouncing trub as /tru:b/, rhyming with boob. So I went and looked it up. Turns out it's the German word for "lees" so, sure enough, this would be the correct pronunciation.
 
So basically, six of one, half dozen of the other...I'll probably just continue to throw the whole lot in.
 
wbosher said:
So basically, six of one, half dozen of the other...I'll probably just continue to throw the whole lot in.
The part to take away from that podcast IMO, was that in certain styles fermenting on the hotbreak was neutral or beneficial.

As an example, porters and stouts might be ruined by the practice; or low OG beers; or IIPAs; or Australian Lagers might taste like armpits - oh, wait - they already do.

Me, since doing it across the board for all styles, I've not noticed any difference to the taste of my beers, but I have noticed the quicker ferment and lower FGs.

I also get between 5 and 10% more beer. In terms of real efficiency - that's huge.
 
My first AG beer I missed every mark and boiled off too hard, left me with 7L less than my target.

I fermented on the hot break and topped up with boiled water

Was one of the best beers i have made, needless to say I now try to keep the break out of the fermenter just for clarity and sediment
 
Great discussion going on here - just to clarify a query as part of the convo - there are different terms being used here for the "break material" sitting at the bottom of the fermentor.
Are we pratically talking about trub (which is often a mixture of hot break, cold break and solid hop matter) rather than specifically hot break.?
Do no chillers still get cold break? Do hop baggers get no hop material in their wort?
As far as I'm aware there's no practical way of separating the wort from the cold break and hops and just leaving behind the hot break.
 
Tilt: The podcast experiment seems to be pouring in the entire lot. Basically their experiment was to siphon off the first half of perfectly clear wort into one fermenter, then to tip the rest into another fermenter and compare final beers.

No-chillers don't get cold break. I can honestly say that having started out no-chilling, I've really not seen any beer improvement at all by chilling and leaving out cold break. I only do it now so I can quickly pitch and be done. Plus siphoning hot wort is a disaster waiting to happen.

Hop bagging still results in hops in the trub, at least with the common sorts of hop sock., it's not a massive layer of hops as if you'd just thrown them in. My intuition is that most people would use some sort of hop sock? I don't know, I always have. It seemed logical that I wouldn't want all the hops in the bottom of my kettle which would probably impact efficiency given I wouldn't be able to collect as much wort.
 
Cheers Chinamat - thanks for clarifying - maybe we should ask for a change to the thread title - "Fermenting on trub".

Funny the assumptions we make hey - my trub always includes hot break, cold break (I use an immersion chiller in the kettle so I'm not handling hot wort) and a heap of hops (I throw them into the kettle sans hopsock as I'm looking for full free ranging utilisation of my hops).

Anyway - this has been a useful topic as it affirms there's nothing wrong with my current process. I ferment on about a fifth of the trub due to my pick up tube location in combo with my stinginess with not wanting to turn off the kettle tap too early (thereby losing a whole bunch of potentially useful wort). Good podcast too.
 
[i just put this in my Palindrome Ale post, but thought it relevant to this]:
...

Sod that. i've wasted 10-20% of my wort trying to avoid cold break! [plus lots of time filtering hot break] I'm definitely not bothering to filter the next few.

So, why wouldn't i just throw some ice into the kettle at flameout (ignoring the infection issue slightly), drop it to 80°C, throw in a small truckload of hops, throw in more ice to drop the temp to ?..35-40°C..?, then pour into the fermenter (bit more cooling & aeration), pitch the yeast at 22°C, & sit back waiting for beer magic???

[the ice is from boiled water, or for the well-geared, use a chiller instead of ice...]
 
seamad said:
That's going to lower your OG
And body and flavour and, well, the beer, IMO.

Let's ignore all that for a minute - technobabble66, why do you feel this plan alters the amount of break materials that you end up with in the fermenter? That plan changes your beer significantly (can be factored in to the recipe, of course), introduces an infection vector and doesn't seem to have any benefit for the context in which you've introduced it here at all.

Tilt, I'd be very interested to see your thoughts on how one might NOT ferment on trub.
 
Yeah Bum - thats partly my point.
My process includes fermenting on some trub - and this thread takes it further to ferment on all of the trub.
If there was a problem with trub fermented beers then it might be worthwhile filtering the wort pre ferment or racking off the trub at 12 hours into the ferment.
Nothing here indicates trub is a problem so no reason to bother. Suits me .
 
I did some side by side ferments a couple of years back and found that it's definitely worth leaving most of the break material out if you can (see here aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/69672-kettle-contents-to-cube/?p=992932). Some cold break obviously gets across, but as discussed previously that's more beneficial than detrimental from what I've read.

To summarise the experiment and my other post, I made Ross' NS Summer Ale, skimmed as much hot break as possible off at the start of boil, whirl-flocced and chilled to pitching temp. 25L batch, top 15L as control into fermenter 1 (F1), 2nd 5L into fermenter 2 and the remaining 5L of trub and wort into fermenter 3. They all had a suitable US05 starter split appropriately between them and were fermented at the same temp. There was about 2L of trub in F3 after settling but it was pretty light and pillowy. F2 & F3 were 6L glass jars with airlocks that I had been using for starters. Blind tasting with a few homebrewing mates and we couldn't pick the difference between 1 & 2, but 3 was definitely the worst. Still drinkable, but it had an astringency or funny taste that wasn't appreciated. I know this is diluted across a whole 25L normally and wouldn't be as noticeable, but it's convinced me to stick with dumping the trub before fermenting. I also use bags for my hops which were flowers in this case, to reduce the amount of trub I get.

Cheers,
BB
 
tilt said:
Yeah Bum - thats partly my point.
My process includes fermenting on some trub - and this thread takes it further to ferment on all of the trub.
If there was a problem with trub fermented beers then it might be worthwhile filtering the wort pre ferment or racking off the trub at 12 hours into the ferment.
Nothing here indicates trub is a problem so no reason to bother. Suits me .
Why are you having trouble with the difference between hot break and trub?
 
No trouble with distinguishing between the two here.
 
bum said:
And body and flavour and, well, the beer, IMO.

Let's ignore all that for a minute - technobabble66, why do you feel this plan alters the amount of break materials that you end up with in the fermenter? That plan changes your beer significantly (can be factored in to the recipe, of course), introduces an infection vector and doesn't seem to have any benefit for the context in which you've introduced it here at all.

Tilt, I'd be very interested to see your thoughts on how one might NOT ferment on trub.
At the risk of being a noob poking the hornets' nest:

I kinda thought if you did a bit of filtering either before pouring into a cube & into the fermenter for a no-chill process, or filtering after the chiller effort in your kettle, you would remove a lot (most?) of the hot & cold break; and that your beer would be much better for it - better stability, less chill haze, less astringency/harshness, etc. i know not all the trub would be removed with all the filtering i might try, and some will always get into the fermenter. I thought the idea originally was to minimise the quantity & hence the impact of the trub that got into the fermenter.

Now that appears to anecdotally not be the case for many home brewers. (not Blue Baggers, obviously)

& i wonder if i can simply circumvent the waste of wort & time by just pouring *everything* into the fermenter, rather than trying to remove a chunk of the 2 breaks/trub; and end up with the same quality.

I think, as a novice, i'm probably just looking to confirm what Nick JD, etc, was saying - that it's ok to leave all the crud in there & just get fermenting already...

-------
:icon_offtopic:
The dilution thing with the ice (drop OG, body, flavour, etc) is no problem - just a simple shift/increase in the ingredients calculations/proportions to compensate for the ice volume.
* Am i missing something here?? Happy to be pointed in the right direction if i am!

The ice is boiled water, poured into ice trays, covered w Glad-wrap, left to cool, covered again with a hard plastic top, into the freezer overnight, & used the next day by being uncovered immediately before going into the hot wort.
I appreciate any additional friggin around always introduces some additional risk of infection, but this process really should minimise that quite a lot.

* Again, am i missing something here??

[the ice/hop stuff was just part of the discussion on late hop additions - apologies for the slight tangent with the ice thing & the hops thing. but feel free to read the Palindrome Ale thread & comment on that there too! ;)​ ]
 
Hornets nest poked :ph34r:

But seriously, everything I've read on this subject seems to point to one conclusion...there is no real evidence to suggest that either way makes any difference.

Personally I throw everything in, after a cc the beer is crystal clear, and no noticable foul taste. Having said that, my sence of smell/taste ain't too flash, but family and friends love my beer so I assume it's not too bad.
 
Why would you add iced water at all?

Filtering a no chill brew when running into the cube will not remove cold break as it hasn't formed yet.

Leaving behind most of the hot break is dead simple and much easier with a carrageegan addition and whirlpool than employing extra equipment that may also aerate the brew while hot.

Someone above said no chill brews don't get cold break. That is incorrect. Cold break forms as the brew cools - it just happens quicker when you chill.

I haven't had a chance to listen to the broadcast yet - can someone who has tell me the age of the beers they sampled which were fermented with all the break material?

I'll hopefully download and listen some time this weekend.
For what personal experience is worth - some of my early AG brews got pretty much everything thrown in and I enjoyed them so I don't believe hot break is an instant killer. However none of those were aged (greedy) and I have since made a system that very easily avoids HB and devised methods that reduce the waste (and sometimes age some beers) so it's not something I'm personally needing to test but I'd be interested in the results of somebody else's side by side.
 

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