Massive Kettle losses :( Need advice

[droid]

The 90degree pick up tube is very handy. For anyone just using the tap and losing wort to trub consider one. It basically threads onto the tap thread with a hole out the end where you then insert the 90deg bit of pipe. You can spin it around to get it at the level you want. It works just like a siphon in that once you have flow it will pull below the tap level. A must on a keggle IMHO
Ed> btw cold crashing drops the hops out if you have that luxury

 

[stux]

BrewBrite helped me,

But switching to a 3V with recirculation and boiling clear wort really really helped reduce the trub losses.

Then I also added a blichman hop-blocker, and I further reduced my losses to about 6L in a 75L batch. Basically that's 5mm left in a 100L kettle.

Consider a false bottom or some sortof filter to aid getting the last drops, after going to brewbrite and perhaps a recirculating system to clean up the wort.

 

[kaiserben]

losing around 2L to trub and its breaking my heart.

I used to BIAB in a 19L pot and was pretty much the same. 2L trub is pretty standard isn't it? Just something you have to accept.

My solution was to move to a bigger system (in my case a Grainfather). I still get ~2L trub, but have 23L going into my fermenter instead of ~9.5L, so it doesn't seem like such a dramatic loss.

 

[Bribie G]

Who sells Brewbite in sydney?

I couldn't find any at ESB last year when I was in there. MHB used to sell it, so try Brewman (in the Hunter) ... reasonable freight rates.

 

[stux]

I couldn't find any at ESB last year when I was in there. MHB used to sell it, so try Brewman (in the Hunter) ... reasonable freight rates.

I'm in Sydney and get mine from Craftbrewer. Also gotten it from MHB in the past.

 

[Weizguy]

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.

I tip the sludge from the keggle into a 5 litre bucket (food grade) and filter it into a number of other containers through a large kitchen sieve.
May need to pour through twice until the sieve establishes a filter bed.

Then into fruit juice bottles or PET/soft drink bottles and into the freezer.
Hardly any waste. Good for yeast starters, after dilution if required..

 

[Nizmoose]

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%.

Yeah my normal batch size is around the 13L mark this one was a 10L (I might have said 13 in the op) so almost a quarter loss to trub.

 

[Barge]

I think it's all been said here but i thought I'd chime in to hopefully add some clarity.

Imagine that 2L lost to trub is pretty standard. That the loss is due somewhat by the amount of trub but also the deadspace in the kettle. I know the OP siphons but it's usually a factor.

At any rate, if i lose 2L in a 10L batch, i have lost 20%. If i am able to scale up to 100L, i would only lose 2% with a 2L loss. Even with a 5L loss I've only lost 5%.

I know this is obvious but small batch brewing is disproportionately affected by losses than large scale. It goes with the territory.

Now, you could obviously employ some of the great advice in this thread to keep the same volume and reduce your losses but the best thing you could do is to scale up to a larger volume as quickly as your budget allows.

 

[micblair]

Lots of good suggestions re. kettle finings, however you might want to address the losses upstream.

- Are you getting clear wort at the end of your mash?
- Are you using malts which are well modified, and don't have excessive protein levels?
- Are you overloading your kettle with hops?
- What's your boil off rate -- is evaporation contributing to your reduced yield?

 

[Eagleburger]

Like a few others i just brewed more. Anyway, I have about 6L of dead space, so I just tilt the kettle and end up with 3L trub. If I could be bothered I put it in a bottle overnight and claim a litre from it for starters.

I would just tip teh lot in the fermenter, but I like to live dangerously.

 

[Nizmoose]

I think it's all been said here but i thought I'd chime in to hopefully add some clarity.
Imagine that 2L lost to trub is pretty standard. That the loss is due somewhat by the amount of trub but also the deadspace in the kettle. I know the OP siphons but it's usually a factor.
At any rate, if i lose 2L in a 10L batch, i have lost 20%. If i am able to scale up to 100L, i would only lose 2% with a 2L loss. Even with a 5L loss I've only lost 5%.
I know this is obvious but small batch brewing is disproportionately affected by losses than large scale. It goes with the territory.
Now, you could obviously employ some of the great advice in this thread to keep the same volume and reduce your losses but the best thing you could do is to scale up to a larger volume as quickly as your budget allows.

This does make sense to a degree, what I don't quite understand is why trub should be relatively standard, I'm certainly not arguing that it isn't but I would have intuitively guessed that the more grain and hops you used, the more trub you would end up with in a fairly linear trend as there is simply more malt protein and hop matter. With regards to larger batches as budget allows its not so much equipment but a desire for variety that keeps me brewing small batches, I love making a slab and a half of a beer and having 5 different selections as opposed to 2 or 3. Its not so much my lack of beer that is killing me its the loss of potential beer that may be possibly saved with little to no extra effort

Lots of good suggestions re. kettle finings, however you might want to address the losses upstream.

- Are you getting clear wort at the end of your mash?
- Are you using malts which are well modified, and don't have excessive protein levels?
- Are you overloading your kettle with hops?
- What's your boil off rate -- is evaporation contributing to your reduced yield?

Some interesting points here, I BIAB and no, I get fairly cloudy wort and my pre-boil gravity samples do have a noticeable amount of protien in them floating around.

I'm assuming Im using well modified malts as I'm using modern Briess/Weyer/etc
RE Excessive protein levels: I do employ a mash schedule which is strong on protein rests which is something I haven't thought about. Im resting at 54 for 10 and 70 for 45 (70 being more for alpha than for protein) but I'm ot actually sure if this plays a part in precipitation of proteins or just strengthens/modifies the protiens that are in solution in the final beer?

Definitely not overloading with hops, The batch in the original post was 10L and used a grand total of 17g of hops haha

My boil off rate is somewhat alarming but also calculated for. Well its not alarming at all in terms of volume but it is as a percentage. around 3L/hr which is around the 23% mark but I mash with 14L, lose 1L to grain, pre-boil is 13L, boil down to 10L, lost 2.3L to trub, Fermenting 7.7L and will probably get 7L packaged. For my normal 13L batch that would look like 17.5L mash, 1.5 loss to grain, 16L boil, 13L post boil, 11-12L into fermenter.


EDIT: After reading this I realise that I should mention that it is nit so much the amount of trub created that is the problem but the lack of seperation. When I say i lose 2L to trub the trub in the kettle is very thin in terms of viscosity i.e. there is plenty of beer in there I just cant get it out without sucking up all the trub. So my main issue is getting that trub more tightly seperated so that more clear wort will come away before I start sucking up trub.

 

[Barge]

I haven't got a good answer to the non-linear nature of trub production. I don't have any personal experience with larger batches so I'm only going by what I've read/heard about. I lose 2L, mainly due to desdspace and no pickup tube or screen. I have no problem with trub in the fermenter but knowing that it ends up as a loss i figure it may as well stay in the kettle.

Having said that, your best option may be to transfer the lot to the fermenter. After fermentation you can cold crash the FV and get a more settled layer of yeast/trub so when you package you won't lose as much beer.

 

[MHB]

I haven't got a good answer to the non-linear nature of trub production. I don't have any personal experience with larger batches so I'm only going by what I've read/heard about. I lose 2L, mainly due to desdspace and no pickup tube or screen. I have no problem with trub in the fermenter but knowing that it ends up as a loss i figure it may as well stay in the kettle.

Having said that, your best option may be to transfer the lot to the fermenter. After fermentation you can cold crash the FV and get a more settled layer of yeast/trub so when you package you won't lose as much beer.

Wrong seriously and fundamentally bad brewing practice!

One of the main reasons for boiling a wort is to coagulate and remove excess particularly high molecular weight protein. To suggest adding it to the fermenter is very bad advice. I've posted this link lots of time but here it is again View attachment 02 - The function of wort boiling1.pdf FFS read it before offering advice on a subject you clearly don't understand.

Nizmoose
Apart from trying some of the ideas suggested earlier, from your last post it, would help if you could turn the heat down, you only need 8-10% evaporation to achieve all the goals of good wort boiling, boiling harder will coagulate more protein, some of it protein that you want to keep in the beer to add body, improve head and provide good yeast nutrition.
Mark

 

[Barge]

Wrong seriously and fundamentally bad brewing practice!

One of the main reasons for boiling a wort is to coagulate and remove excess particularly high molecular weight protein. To suggest adding it to the fermenter is very bad advice.

Why? The only statement that even remotely supports your belief is

"Proteins which combine with unoxidised polyphenols are soluble in boiling wort but precipitate when chilled and can give rise to chill haze and cold break. The polyphenols may subsequently oxidise during beer processing and may produce colloidal instability in packaged beer."

This can only occur if the protein-polyphenol complexes are in the packaged beer. As they are insoluble in beer, and not in the packaged beer, as they are left in either the kettle or the fermenter, then this concern is minor. Particularly in the context of the O.P.'s scenario. He's brewing a carton of beer FFS (yes, I can swear at people on the internet too). I'm not too sure that he's worried about colloidal instability.

But what about "off flavours" I hear you cry?

No mention of that in your article the article that you found that applies more to large scale breweries.

What is mentioned is

"The DMS released during boiling is rapidly lost through evaporation. However, the breakdown of S-methyl methionine continues during the period between the end of boiling and wort cooling. The DMS released is not lost and persists into the finished beer. It is, therefore, possible to control the level of DMS by varying the duration of boil and whirlpool stage.

Methods of control DMS levels in beer:
• use malt with low S- methyl methionine levels.
• long wort boiling time to decompose precursor and vaporise DMS.
• short whirlpool stand time to reduce decomposition of the precursor.
• rapid wort cooling – reducing the time the wort is held hot.
• use wort stripping after the whirlpool stand to remove DMS."

Quick, better go tell all the no-chill brewers that they're full of **** and their beers are (excuse the technical terms but I'm trying to establish my superiority and I haven't got any science-y articles to link to) "chocka's full of DMS".

Oh wait, here's an article that discusses the effect of wort turbidity linky

They state that

"According to Sommer the influence of wort turbidity on beer quality is often overestimated. For example in his investigations fast and turbid lautering did not lead to a deterioration of flavour quality of the resulting beer.111 In the extensive large-scale trials mentioned previously, Schur and Pfenninger evaluated the influence of different lauter regimes (turbid, clear) and lauter durations (long, short) on the flavour quality of the resulting beers. Related to lauter turbidity and duration they found the following order with decreasing sensory quality of the fresh beers: “turbid/short”, “turbid/long”, “clear/short”, “clear/long”. When the same beers were aged for 5 weeks at 25°C the order was as follows: “turbid/long”, “clear/ short”, “turbid/short”, “clear/long”. In contrast, Mück reported a negative influence of turbid lauter worts connected with high fatty acid amounts prior to wort boiling and high oxygen content on beer flavour and observed an unpleasant bitterness which most probably did not depend on fatty acids. Here, the influence of turbidity seemed to be bigger than that of oxygen. In contrast, Whitear et al. explained that the effect of lipids was overestimated and weighs much less than the oxygen pick-up during wort production"

Also,

"In conclusion, many authors support that the removal of fatty acids from wort, as far as possible, is favourable for flavour stability. According to Zangrando clear lautering is obligatory to providing good flavour stability. On this point Schur and Pfenninger partly disagree as they found that beers produced from extended lautering and very clear worts performed the worst in taste testings of fresh and aged beers."

Which basically states that wort turbidity is complex and produces a highly variable effect on beer flavour quality. They report similar variation in terms of flavour stability and foam stability.

One of their concluding statements

"most of the authors pointed out the positive influence of cloudy wort in terms of yeast metabolism and fermentation performance. At the same time, however, the adverse consequences of high lauter turbidity for the final beer quality, particularly for flavour and foam stability, were thoroughly discussed. Since the negative consequences seemed to outweigh, this led to the preference of high wort clarity, and this has been generally accepted among brewers until today."

Given that the main issue is one of stability, I question the impact this will have on nizmoose's beer.

Here's a related experience on a small scale
http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/

Here's what they found

"The assumption that clearer wort in the fermentor leads to clearer beer in the end appears to be false, at least based on the results of this exBEERiment, with all samplers agreeing that Truby was brighter than Non-Truby."

Additionally,

"For those who tend to prefer clearer and crisper beers with potentially sharper bitterness, consider not worrying too much about the amount of kettle trub you transfer to the carboy. Alternately, those who enjoy slightly smoother bitterness and don’t mind a bit more haze in their beer may want to continue investing a little more effort in transferring only the clearest wort to their fermentor."

Again, if you like your information to be more authoritative then the effect of adding trub to fermentation vessels was also reported here.

They found that

"The addition of hot trub of various origins to yeasts of various vitalities leads to higher cell counts in suspension and consequently, to higher fermentation performance. In summary, hot trub addition is beneficial to yeast of either, high vitality (e.g. propagated/assimilated yeast), or low vitality (e.g. after several fermentation cycles). Further, the more hot trub or particles are added, the more advantageous for fermentation."

Admittedly, they concede that

"potential consequences for final beer quality are somewhat [beyond] the scope of this paper and have to be considered when applying hot trub in practical operations."

None of this means that fermenting on trub is 'fundamentally bad brewing practice!". It means that nizmoose should listen to and do whatever the **** he want's to enhance his enjoyment of this hobby.

Or just PM Mark every time you have a question.

Before you start slagging off at people you might want to consider that you don't know everything.

EDIT: Before the flaming starts I want to point out that

i) I have a Science degree, have worked as a scientist, I understand science.
ii) Peer reviewed journals are fundamental for the rigor that is necessary in the execution of good Science
iii) Science can be performed by anyone, anywhere, anytime. I'm not saying that the blog "proves" anything about fermenting on trub. I'm aware it's one persons experience. FWIW, I think that it is one of his better experiments but I place no statistical significance in his findings. I include it as it shows the potential for nizmoose to minimise system losses whilst having a potentially minimal impact (positive or negative) on beer quality.

 

[MHB]

The article I posted is from the IBD training material freely available to anyone who wants to learn a bit about brewing, I realise that it is fairly basic and not a peer reviewed journal but it is written by a master brewer (PhD equivalent in brewing) and published by the organisation that presents as much or more peer reviewed brewing research than any other - not some blogger.

You have linked to the peer reviewed JIB paper that kicked off the whole question about wort turbidity.
You will notice that it deals mostly with the turbidity of sweet water going to the kettle, for some reason a few home brewers have rather questionably taken this to be about kettle wort.
Just so we understand what we are talking about here is an illustration of the turbidity standards in FTU/NTU

Note in the conclusion to the paper that the authors are talking about turbidity's under 10EBC going TO the kettle as being problematic, 1EBC is 0.25FTU/NTU so 2.5 on the scale illustrated (between the far right sample and the margin). That's a hell of a long way from being a supporting argument for dumping all the hot break into the fermenter.

We all know a little (0.1-0.2 ppm) of Zinc is important, actually its vital, so would adding 500ppm of zinc to a wort be a good idea - no it would poison the yeast.
Is a little hot break going to ruin the beer - no. A little hot break will always make it into the fermenter, but like the zinc question does a little being beneficial mean a lot is a good idea?
Saying yes is very much what I think of as Bad Science!

As for saying the training information I posted doesn't say lots of hot break is bad, of the opening 4 bullet points, the second one means "We boil a wort to reduce protein" that is listed before getting what we want out of hops and reducing volatiles (a different conversation) and no you couldn't hear me crying about it, not relevant to the question in hand.
Suggesting that someone add all the condensed protein back to the fermenter is ridiculous, clearly wrong and very bad brewing practice.

I have to head off to a brewery now, got some beer to filter and get kegged, a pump to service and a bit of welding to do if the Argon holds up.
Mark

 

[danestead]

MHB, just let him dump the whole lot into his fermentor and 'enjoy' his beer!

 

[Nizmoose]

If I can chime in before people die I think both MHB and Barge make reasonable points and I take bits away from both arguments. The big take home for me is to find a way to get better kettle efficiency and to not stress immensely about getting a LITTLE bit of trub in the fermenter but at the same time ensuring most remains in the kettle

 

[Vini2ton]

I'm sure I've read something about just this topic of fermenting on trub. It said something along the lines of that it did not matter much and most people with strong opinions of said topic were bottle-fed anyway. You're not Heineken. Brewbrite rules ok.

 

[Nizmoose]

Okay time for some follow up and its not good. Today I brewed a 1.070 IPA and it was my first chance to give whirlfloc a try. Added about a third of a tablet with 5 mins left of the boil. It was a tiny 7 L batch and a third of a tab fits perfectly to the recommended dosage. I chilled the wort down to 25C in 10 mins then let the pot sit for about 20 minutes tilted. Came back and not only had the protein not settled out better than previous batches but it was by a country mile so much worse. All the trub was maybe 5mm from the surface and not moving down. I tried a whirlpool then another 20 minute rest, no improvement. So to get my wort into the fermenter I sat there pissed off with a strainer and siphon filling the strainer with ****, stopping the siphon, clearing the ****, restarting the siphoning, clearing ****, etc. So much worse than previous batches. I took a lot of crap into the fermenter but still left over a litre behind after I got sick of straining wort. I left it in the pot and cleaned up, went to the girlfriends and came back and the **** was still sitting almost at the top of the remaining wort. I'm genuinely at a loss on what to do. The only thing I can think of is that a 1.070 wort was more dense than the trub and protein but I'm having a hard time believing it. Sooooo many people here seem to get crystal clear wort into the fermenter, I'm not chasing crystal clear, just something I dont have to run through a god damned strainer for 30 minutes to get anything into the fermenter... Rant over

 

[Nizmoose]

For reference here's a picture after a 20 minute sit. Absolutely useless!