Losses To Trub, Advice Needed.

[Gretschem]

U could even try crash chilling the no chill cube :unsure: .

 

[TidalPete]

I have tried it though - and what i found is

Any sort of seive - be it a bag or a hard seive does one of two things when you pour wort through them.

Its either not fine enough and lets almost all of the break material through, or it is fine enough & clogs up almost instantly & the wort that goes through is clear, but it takes hours to drain. Just a "sieve" is basically useless for break separation.

A sieve with hop flowers in it is a different story, then it becomes essentially a hopback and works perfectly well, still not lightning fast, but a proven and quite traditional method of trub separation if you are careful about your technique.

Fairly large surface area seives in the bottom of kettles seem to be an exception - like Tony's rig. The pellet hops form the actual filter bed, and there is enough surface area and pressure differential to make the wort come out in a reasonable period of time. I never managed to make it work very well for me... But other people seem to. Tony knows what he's doing and if he can make it work, it works. You just have to keep on tweaking till you get a result.

TTBOMM Tony drains from the centre of his kettle & combined with his (Termimesh?) filter this seems to be the secret of his success? Care to comment Tony?
Have always had problems in this area of brewing with my 70 litre Robinox kettle & for the last 18 months have been adding hops to a hopsock & filtering through a tea ball with quite reasonable success (the remaining 4 litres of trub poured into a jug for overnight settling before being frozen for starters). Apologies for the bad pic.


Enquired re Beer Belly some time ago to ask if their ss filters (2mm holes) would work with full pellet additions & was told they would but with an initial burst of pellet residue into the fermenter using an initial slow drain?
Before forking out the multidollars for a Beer Belly filter need to know of other brewers experiences with the BB filter\All pellet additions.
I am merely looking for the most efficient way to filter before setting up my plate chiller & any advice in this area would be greatly appreciated.

TP

 

[Acasta]

Firing this thread up again, if anyone is interested.
I've finally got the mill going, and still chilling. I noticed less trub with the mill, however, the chilling is causing cold break which is ok, but its hard to distinguish from the hot break. After re-reading this thread, i'n going to try and use less whirfloc. Maybe about 1qtr tablet and see what happenes.

The trub at the bottom is quite fluffy and stirrs up very easily. Also, i'm finding it hard to get a good whirlpool going. Maybe my technique is bad, but since i started chilling, i get no cone. Just flat layer of fluffy trub.

 

[goomboogo]

Try starting your whirlpool from the edge of the kettle and gradually build up speed. As the wort begins to rotate well, gradually reduce the size of your stirring. That is, whilst stirring, gradually move your stirrer away from the side of the kettle until you are eventually stirring near the centre of the pot with a small diameter on the stir. By this stage there should be quite a lot of speed to the wort rotation.

Other aspects to consider are; leaving sufficient time between flameout and beginning the whirlpool so as to allow for the convection current to subside and allowing enough time after whirlpooling to allow everything to settle.

The description of the technique may not make sense. I struggled to put it into words.

 

[Acasta]

Try starting your whirlpool from the edge of the kettle and gradually build up speed. As the wort begins to rotate well, gradually reduce the size of your stirring. That is, whilst stirring, gradually move your stirrer away from the side of the kettle until you are eventually stirring near the centre of the pot with a small diameter on the stir. By this stage there should be quite a lot of speed to the wort rotation.

Other aspects to consider are; leaving sufficient time between flameout and beginning the whirlpool so as to allow for the convection current to subside and allowing enough time after whirlpooling to allow everything to settle.

The description of the technique may not make sense. I struggled to put it into words.

I do work from the outside in, maybe im not whirlpooling long enough? How long should it be stirred for?

There are no convections as the wort is cooled, i left the wort for 30min after whirlpool, sound like long enough?

Your description is fine, thanks! :icon_cheers:

 

[bcp]

IMO: Hot break = bad for beer, cold break = benign.

I'd like clarity (no pun intended) on this. I thought they were essentially the same proteins. This is what i've gleaned so far, but i'm still getting my head around it, so haven't worked out which proteins are which:

• Protein flocculation is affected by pH - usually it's too high to be optimal, which is 4.9 - but we don't want to get down that low anyway for other reasons.
• Most of the proteins go out with the grain. I think about 30% of the spent grain is protein.
• Hot break in the boil only accounts for about 10% of the proteins removed
• Cold break is essentially the same composition. (Essays in brewing science p9)
• Sterols in cold break are useful for growth of cell walls for yeast amongst other things - at least that's just from memory.
• Protein can be also lost by the trub & krausen
• Finings can also reduce proteins

So i'm curious to know if using a sieve for cold break is a bad idea. Is it letting too much through?

I totally agree with MHB - i don't mind leaving stuff behind that doesn't contribute to the quality of the final product. I'd rather have less but with quality, than squeeze trouble into my brew.

Disclaimer: There are people on this site who genuinely understand this stuff. I don't. I'm just have pockets of information at this stage, not the big picture.
Edit: i repeated myself

 

[RdeVjun]

So i'm curious to know if using a sieve for cold break is a bad idea. Is it letting too much through?

I don't use a sieve for cold break, I use a sieve and whole hops targeting as much as possible of any break, so I really can't answer your question directly. But seeing as you quoted my earlier post, [nb. context] if you use a goodly amount of whole kettle hops in your sieve then no, I don't believe it lets too much through and IMO together they work rather well. As related earlier, the state and national judges didn't disagree. If you don't use the hops in conjunction with the sieve then yes, perhaps it is letting through too much break.
The whole hops makes all the difference, the sieve is just a convenient mechanical containment. If you expect a sieve to trap a significant amount of break without any other filter media/ matrix, well I'd be preparing for a little surprise...
As Thirsty related earlier, whole hops in a sieve isn't that different to a hopback.