What Do You Do?

[Coodgee]

Hi guys, just wondering what different people do here:

After chilling your wort out of the kettle you find that it only fills up to the 16L mark on the fermenter. You have 4 litres of trub in the bottom of the kettle.

Do you

A) top up the fermenter with the trub?

B) top it up with water?


Assume your efficency is also a little lower than normal, so that if you top up with trub, you will slightly overshoot your og, and if you top up with water you will slightly undershoot your og.


This happened to me on saturday. I was brewing a double batch. I ended up pouring 2L of trub in and 2L of water.

 

[barneyhanway]

I ferment the 16l and make a note to increase batch size next time.
No point adding trub, it won't make it to the bottle anyway so might as well ditch it then and there.
Add water? I won't even dignify that with an answer

 

[xtrabyte]

I would ferment the 16 lt and add more malt the next brew

 

[AUHEAMIC]

Hi Coogee

There is a big thread on here somewhere regarding this topic. I think its called the all trub method.

Anyway I have just completed 2 experiments as I seam to lose about 6-7 litres and thats too much beer to lose.

I brew double batches and I split the batch into 2. In one fermenter I put all the sweet clear wort and let it ferment out with no racking. In the second fermenter I put everything else in which I rack after 24 hours after fermentation has started leaving behind the break and hops material.

As I said I have done this twice and to my untrained pallet I cant tell the difference between the two batches.

Using this method I only lose about 2 litres.

Hope this helps
Peels

 

[stillscottish]

Hate to admit it but I tip all the trub into a big steel mesh seive and squeeze all the liquid out of it.

Campbell

 

[PostModern]

I just made a batch which I boiled for 100 mins and forgot to account for the extra evaporation. Ended up with 15 litres of 1.086 in the no-chill cube. I plan to top to 17L at 1.076 up with cooled boiled water when pitching.

Not quite the same situation, tho, sure. In your place, I'd just ferment the 16l.

 

[lokpikn]

I bought a hop bag from craft brewer and now get all most all of the wort out of the kettel i reckon i get at least another 4 ltrs out of my 75 ltr boil pot.

 

[len]

I second the suggestion to use a hop bag. If you can't wait for one to arrive, buy a cheap pair of pantyhose, cut the ends off, and tie shut with a paperclip. Works great.

I have to admit that if I end up under target, which I do regularly because my kettle's too big and so measuring volumes is hard, I boil up another few litres of water with dextrose or dry malt extract, depending on the recipe. It takes me six hours from go to whoah on brewday, so I want a full batch!

 

[Simon W]

Sometimes you have no choice. My brew for the Perth xmas case was under target and I had to add approx 3L. Without it I wouldn't have had enough bottled to go around. Still hit target OG without adding DME or dex or sugar.

I filter out the trub with a sheet of bleached, boiled and sanitised Calico over the fermenter's mouth. Kinda takes a while for the last of the wort to flow thru toward the end(the fine trub blocks the weave), but the trickle does an awesome job of aeration.
I then wring out rest of wort frum trub by twisting the calico sheet. Get almost no crap in the fermenter. Everything on the bottom after fermentation is yeast.

Simo