Massive Kettle losses :( Need advice

[Nizmoose]

I think I mentioned in another topic somewhere that I was having trouble with losses due to really lousy whirlpools and I'm still having problems. My set up is very basic and so are my methods so I'm basically looking for some simple suggestions to help reduce my losses. At the moment I am brewing 10-13L batches, nailing my mash efficiency but losing around 2L to trub and its breaking my heart. Yes I could just dump it all in but I'm after a resolution a little less crude. My methods are basically; Chill with an immersion chiller, get it down to around 20C before removing the chiller and giving the pot a good whirlpool with a spoon off the burner and letting it sit for around 30 minutes. After it has sat I use a siphon starting at the top and get brilliantly clear wort until with about 3L to go it starts getting cloudy, I then keep siphoning as long as I can bear (about 1L), cry, stop siphoning, look into the pot helplessly, cry again.

All I am using is BIAB with a 19L pot, no ball valve just a siphon from going from the kettle to the fermenter, my 'trub cones' are more like pancakes and I dont use whirlfloc (will start if people think it'll help the WP?).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[seamad]

I've found the brewbrite kettle fining to be better than whirfloc. I don't whirlpool anymore either, just let it all settle and drain, measured the trub via both methods and was fuckall difference. I get less than 2l usually from double batches.

 

[n87]

In my experience the whirlfloc creates clear wort, and trub.
there is no middle ground

Worth a try... not expensive.

 

[Danscraftbeer]

Wirfloc works well I use it every time. Just for shared reference I have a keggle and without tilting it will drain leaving behind 4lt of trub. I factor that in, its all muck. The 4lt leftover trub then gets bottled (3lt apple juice bottles) then cold crashed. Then I pour the clear wort into a clean bottle and frozen for later use for starters, or you could add it to the next brew boil. I usually get under 2lt clear wort from the 4lt of trub. The muck left over from that goes into compost. I hate to waste any.

 

[Rocker1986]

I think a kettle fining such as Whirlfloc or Brewbrite would be quite useful in this situation. I gave up whirlpooling as well and just let the wort sit for 15 mins post flameout, though I am gonna return to tilting my urn backwards slightly at flameout to encourage the shit to settle away from the tap outlet. I don't know why I ever stopped doing that but it always resulted in leaving bugger all behind in the urn after draining to the cube.

 

[antiphile]

You could attack it on several fronts. Firstly, the use of a kettle fining, as suggested by seamad and the very good looking n87, is a great idea. Personally, I'm a Brewbrite fan, but whirlfloc or DeltaFloc-T etc, or Irish Moss or whatever will improve your results for not only the amount you drain from the kettle, but also in final clarity.

Another way to increase the wort volume is a differently shaped stock pot from the Woolies one; but it will cost you more.It'd be helpful to get one that is taller than its wide - but money may be an issue.

It is really easy to install a ball valve and that will really help to minimise the crap going into the FV (see one of the many YouTube vids etc).. The valve itself might cost around $25 or a bit more for SS, but will give you much more flexibilty to put in a pick arm etc, and slow down the drainage rate significanty to minimise trub disturbance.

Failing any of those options, all I can suggest is to make the end of boil volume a few litres more and accept the losses.

Cheers

 

[antiphile]

Wirfloc works well I use it every time. Just for shared reference I have a keggle and without tilting it will drain leaving behind 4lt of trub. I factor that in, its all muck. The 4lt leftover trub then gets bottled (3lt apple juice bottles) then cold crashed. Then I pour the clear wort into a clean bottle and frozen for later use for starters, or you could add it to the next brew boil. I usually get under 2lt clear wort from the 4lt of trub. The muck left over from that goes into compost. I hate to waste any.

Fantastic tip about using the leftovers for starters. Thanks for that Dan!
Why haven't I ever thought of that? (-a-) Stupidity; (-b-) Ignorance; or (-c-) Inability to train an old dog.

 

[yum beer]

I also brew smaller batches, around 14-16 litres normally and low efficiency is part and parcel of that process.
I use whirlfloc religiously, as in all the time, not with a prayer and utterance to virgins and such....and get lovely clear wort but do lose a bit to crud.
I boil in a keggle and have not got around to putting in a tap and bits....have them all in a box, a dusty box....but I use an immersion chiller then once cool tip keggle into one of the newer coopers fermenters, the tap sist at 3 litres, then let sit for 15 minutes, I can get most of the wort out the tap then with a gentle tip I can get most of the rest without upsetting the trub on the bottom.
I allow 1 litre of loss in my calculations.
I work on 58% eff. with my system which is not great but mostly due to losses through the entire process. A litre here and there adds up when start with lower amounts.
I say get the clearest wort out you can, allow extra grain if you need to go a little over gravity and water down.
It probably costs me 1/2 kilo extra grain using my current system, but I get consistent results and am happy with my process.
Supposedly a little crud helps the ferment anyway and it finishes in the bottom of the FV not in the beer you drink.

 

[MHB]

Another BrewBright fan, but like all kettle finings more isn't better, there is a right dose and all the other doses as this picture illustrates

For a bit more reading try these two View attachment Protafloc Tablets.pdf and View attachment PolyclarBrewbrite.pdf.
There is a bit more to it than just the right dose, the optimum pH and how and when you add kettle finings play a very important role .

The other big problem a lot of BIAB brewers encounter is to some extent of their own making,
Try not grinding the grain too fine, a lot of flour can go through some bags. Which apart from just increasing the amount of trub can add quite a lot of starch to the boil (if you have issues with kettle foaming this is a likely cause).
Don't squeeze the bag!
There can be a lot of high molecular weight protein in among the malt and squeezing can add a lot of it to the kettle where it becomes trub.
If you can at the end of mashing recirculate the sweet water through the grain to trap flour and HMW protein, then let the bag drain slowly back to the kettle you might see a large reduction in your trub loadings.
If you sparge watch the sparge temperature and pH, again you can extract a lot of extra trub forming material if your temp and pH are too far out of bounds.
Hope this helps.
Mark

 

[5150]

I'm not sure if you already use one, but I recently bought a couple of hop spiders. I brew fairly big batches and I have found these have been great. There is still a bit of hops material that gets through but I have reduced my kettle loss massively. 1cm in my kettle is 2.5L, so it adds up quickly. I also use whirlfloc and I've found that a decent cold crash results in nice clear beer in the glass.

 

[manticle]

A good kettle fining and good whirlpool technique should see separation of wort and trub but even so, there will always be a bit left behind. What dan has described is exactly what I do.

 

[Topher]

Who sells Brewbite in sydney?

 

[Yob]

Cube hopping for me reduced my kettle losses to ~250ml with a decent whirlpool...

Only kettle additions I do are for bittering..

(brewbrite addition notwithstanding)

Ed. Exclusive no chiller

Ed. Ed.. Exclusive 75 output

 

[Topher]

Hey yob. Has that just transferred the problem op is talking about though? I mean your kettle losses might be tiny, but are you fermenter or cube losses bigger?

 

[danestead]

As said above, it would help to slow down your siphon so the hop cone doesn't pancake out as easily.

2L loss to trub isn't bad, I'd be happy with that.

 

[Nizmoose]

Wow thanks for all the great replies, I think I'll combine some of these suggestions starting with a kettle fining and a tilted pot. 2L doesn't seem too much but for example yesterday it was a 23% loss in volume to trub and that probably puts it into perspective, not ideal. My siphon is actually quite slow, the tubing attached is about 5mm diameter maybe 8mm at the most, it's more that a cone never seems to form.

 

[Yob]

Hey yob. Has that just transferred the problem op is talking about though? I mean your kettle losses might be tiny, but are you fermenter or cube losses bigger?

Nope

 

[MHB]

A good kettle fining will make a big difference.
in your OP 2L loss in 13L comes to about 15% kettle loss, I thought that was pretty bad and would expect something less than 10%, but a 23% loss is really a problem. The smaller the system the bigger the losses proportionally, but giving up nearly a quarter of your beer is ridiculous.
I would be taking a long hard look at my water chemistry, Adelaide water is notorious it might be worth doing a brew or two in purified water with customised salt additions.
A blend of CaCl and CaSO4 is a good starting place, make sure you get at least 100ppm of Ca into your water and there are some real benefits to adding some acid. I'm lucky to live in a town with really brilliant brewing water, I still like to add Ca but have been using a Calcium Lactate/Lactic acid buffer complex to get the extra Ca and the right pH, CaLac/Lac Acid is a really powerful buffer so it locks the pH in where I want it.
Last Thursday I did a 120L batch of mild; being low gravity low hop beer the trub loss were smaller than usual, about 3L, 3L/120L gives me a loss of 2.5%, in bigger hoppier beers on the same system kettle loss is about 5%.

Just following up on a couple of suggestions from above: -
Tilting the pot, can help but only if you do have a nice tight trub cone already formed, don't tilt the pot while whirlpooling it throws the whole dynamics of the whirlpooling action out and will inhibit cone formation.
I am very leery of hop spiders and false bottoms and the like in kettles, it is really easy to filter out hop debris but nearly impossible to separate out Hot Break by filtration, not even big commercial brewers can do so easily.
I would concentrate on fixing the problem rather than investing in prophylactics of very questionable virtue.
Mark

 

[NewtownClown]

Wirfloc works well I use it every time. Just for shared reference I have a keggle and without tilting it will drain leaving behind 4lt of trub. I factor that in, its all muck. The 4lt leftover trub then gets bottled (3lt apple juice bottles) then cold crashed. Then I pour the clear wort into a clean bottle and frozen for later use for starters, or you could add it to the next brew boil. I usually get under 2lt clear wort from the 4lt of trub. The muck left over from that goes into compost. I hate to waste any.

You can also use it for Krausening your beer and Forced Fermentation Tests

 

[Diesel80]

oh man my losses are 6L-7L of gunk in the bottom of the pot since installing my ball valve.
Should have drilled lower...

Of that there is probably a good 4L of wort. 75L pot.

I allow for this in the losses to trub section of the brewmate program. If i control my boil to hit target volume i get my two cubes. They are clearer than prior when i used to siphon so I am happy.

If i chilled the trub overnight i could get a couple more litres of wort, could use for starters, but i seen no reason this could not be split between fermentation vessels to offset the losses in the kettle. There are worse practices out there turning out good beer.

Cheers,
D80