Hot & Cold Break

[Thirsty Boy]

The other thing I forgot to mention - is that cold break is a nasty brown colour and hotbreak is kinda white looking. The brown goo that rises to the top of your fermenter when C02 first starts to evolve.... cold break!

Starting a siphon - I use a turkey baster. Squeeze the end of the hose into a Z shape so its kinked shut, squish it. Squeeze the air out of your turkey baster, shove it in the end of the hose, unsquish the kink - suck with turkey baster. If its not enough to get the wort flowing first time... squeeze shut the hose again and give it another suck.

Baster, hands and hose all wet with no rinse sanitiser of course

TB

 

[avaneyk]

I bought a syphon from my LHBS thats meant for racking wine. It has a plastic cane section that goes into my cooled wort in the brew pot (I use an immersion chiller made from copper pipe). This cane section is connected to a hose with a tap on the end and has plastic pump thing in the middle.

To start the syphon, you close the tap and squeeze the plastic pump section, then put the cane into your wort and let go of the pump. This sucks wort into the hose. Then you open the tap and point the hose at your fermenter.

Works well for me.

Andrew

{edit: spelling}

 

[Nick JD]

In cubes, does the hot break settle out completely?

I get the spoon out and scrape the developing foam just on boil ... am I removing the hot break before it drops?

 

[hazard]

To start the syphon, you close the tap and squeeze the plastic pump section, then put the cane into your wort and let go of the pump. This sucks wort into the hose. Then you open the tap and point the hose at your fermenter.

Works well for me.

I have a plastic racking cane, and length of PVC - only rack after wort has cooled down. I tried filling tube and cane with water but too hard, so i just suck till I get a flow and drop the end of the tube in the fermenter. Course, I always brush my teeth first . I've never tried star san, imagine it would taste pretty awful, so i often use Listerine as well .

I do the same later on when racking for bulk priming. Never had an infection yet.

 

[cdbrown]

There is a lot of break material that settles in the bottom of the cube that's for sure. Whether it's hot or cold or bit of both is hard to say.

I now try to ensure I leave the hop and any other break material in the pot when transferring to cube. Although I'm pretty sure it's just mainly hop material that's left behind. I transfer hot using an auto syphon hose tip and the silicone tubing. Then when transferring to fermenter I try to pour through a sieve to catch any thicker break material - also provides aeration.

 

[braufrau]

I'm a scum skimmer.
And I strain all the hops and break out at the end with a sanitised strainer.
Now I need to get this fat cat off me and go and clean the brewery ready for tomorrow.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

The thing is - any strainer thats fine enough to actually remove the majority of the break - would clog up with break almost immediately and cease to flow or at least slow to a trickle. This is different if you are using a hopback, which is a depth filtration thing. Generally, strainers will let through as much as they stop. In the instance of break separation - homebrewers can indeed learn a lesson from commercial practice. If strainers were a "good" way of separating break, thats probably what the commercials would use. Instead they use (mainly) whirlpools and hopbacks - with the odd settling tank, centrifuge and other weird stuff thrown in.

I'm not saying strainers don't work - its just that they are likely to remove a relatively low proportion of the break compared to a hop back or a carefully managed whirpool, or be very slow at removing a higher proportion.

You don't have to be terribly terribly fussy though - I think it was mentioned earlier. Leave the majority of the hot break behind ... don't worry about the cold break. You can be fussier - it might even improve your beers... but the amount of effort involved vs the rewards gained. Small. Its a thing to come back to when you have all the other stuff in your process ironed out. OR - you might find that a strainer or not even worrying about hotbreak at all works for you - plenty of people do.