Hot And Cold Break Help

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Masha

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G'day,

I'm putting together an upgraded setup and collecting DME recipes ahead of my third brew (first two LME cankit brews were garbage due to multiple errors in technique).

Anyway, the proposed thermostatically controlled 35L boiler (read big arse tea/coffee urn) and immersion chiller should give me the ability do a full boil this time around and to precipitate the hot and cold breaks pretty effectively. However once i split those nasty proteins out of the wort I'm stuck... I don't know how they behave or what I need to do about them.

Does the hot break float and get skimmed off the top or will it settle to the bottom allowing me to tap it off before I transfer to the fermenter? or do you just leave it in there?

It seems from my reading (of the interwebs) that the cold break settles to the bottom and can be excluded from the beer along with the yeast cake during the bottling/kegging process. also that leaving the cold break to settle in the fermenter may allow it to act as a yeast nutrient of sorts. Have I got this right?

I'd appreciate any advice on how to use irish moss to clean up the wort too. I think I have the gelatine technique down as it relates to clearing yeast but given that this first brew will be bottle conditioned anyway I'm not too worried about yeast clouding, does gelatine help to flocculate the cold break proteins though?

Thanks in advance
 
Just to clarify, you're talking about extract recipes, right?
 
Not certain about the cold but the hot should definitely have been removed during production.

Cold break isn't anything to stress too much about in any case - as anyone who runs through a plate chiller right into the fermenter should be able to attest. Not to mention no-chillers (yes, let's not mention them, haven't seen that argument for a while and I am glad).
 
I use Briess Light DME (from G&G) for Starters and It always has a portion of Cold break form. not noticed any hot break.
 
Your wasting a 35l urn and an immersion chiller on extract. Just jump to Biab and follow one of the step by step guides.
 
Awesome so I'm off the hook with hot break!

Yeah bum all extract at this stage.

Plastic Man the urn will still be there if/when i move on to BIAB/partials but for now I need to get my skills, technique and processes refined before I dive into all grain.

Basically the plan, for the first little while, is to do extract brews "from scratch" (use unhopped extracts, experiment with different hops, yeasts, steeped grains etc) so I can get an idea of how to create different flavours and qualities in the beer without having to invest quite as much cash and time per brew as I would with BIAB or true A/G. I guess I could lay out the cash to set up for BIAB and I know it doesn't take "that much" more time than an extract on brew day, but I'm ready to bet it'll result in me spending the next few years doing clones of other peoples beers.

So back O/T is there any merit at all in trying to siphon off any cold break material which turns up after I chill the wort or should I just leave it to settle in the fermenter and let the you-beaut coopers yeast excluding tap thingy keep it out of the finished product?
 
I disagree. its good to do extracts to get into the process of doing all grains. Is a good stepping stone.

You have some good items there. All you need is a small pump to recirculate for when you do mashes and you have a sweet little single v setup
 
Define 'need'.

I agree that taking the time to get the fundamentals under control is a great idea.
 
By "need" I guess I mean, is trying to physically separate any cold break material likely to cause other issues with the brew?

The process I was thinking of employing was to chill the wort in the urn/brewpot then let it settle for say 20min - 1hr and, tap a litre or so off the bottom and discard, then transfer the rest of the wort to the fermenter for pitching . But I'm not sure exactly how long the break would take to settle or that the benefits of separating it outweigh the contamination risk posed by letting the cold wort sit for that long.
 
Sorry, I was talking to fish.

You're over thinking it, Masha. Cold break won't ruin your beer. Besides, I was reading a post by ThirstyBoy the other day where he highlighted how it effectively isn't even possible to completely remove cold break from wort in the kettle or during transfer to the fermenter. Letting a bunch settle out after chilling won't cause your brew any issues but there will still be break material. You certainly shouldn't be discarding any wort because of it.

Have a look into plate chillers and counter-flow chillers that many homebrewers and commercial breweries use. Often times, every bit of coldbreak makes its way into primary. It really isn't something you need to worry so much about.
 

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