Whirlpool Idea

[Gout]

well along the lines of chillers "brain fart" i also was thinking today (yes it hurt) and with talk of whirlpool on another beer list, and some weekend talk about CFC and cold break going into the fermenter

and although i dont really intend on doing this, i would just like to know about this idea.

Use a pump to draw liquid from the boiler (once finished) and pump it back into the boiler at a angle to cause a whirlpool. This causing the hops etc to form the cone.

But how about running the pump via a CFC chilling the wort to cause cold break and cooling the wort temp in the boiler while whirlpooling, this will (i think?) then cause most the cold break to also form the cone in the boiler,

after 10 min, stop it, let settle and then pump it out of the boiler via the CFC cooling it even further without the cold break?

will the break re-dissolve when it enters the warm/hot wort in the start etc

anyway food for thought as i said i dont think i will do it, but it might solve the whirlpool issue and also the coldbreak in the fermenter problem with CFC.

over and out

 

[pint of lager]

Gout, a couple of problems I can see with your idea.

Running through the CFC and straight back into the hot wort will not cool the wort rapidly.

Cold break formation relies on a quick cooling.

By doing so much pumping of the wort warm, there may be more chance of the dreaded HSA.

One way you could attack the problem, whirlpool, run wort through cfc into fermenter, clean out hops from kettle, pour cooled wort back into boiler, whirlpool again, run wort off from cold break into your fermenter.

From reading many posts about the importance of cold break on HBD and Craftbrewer, some cold break left in the fermenter is important for yeast nutrition. Too much cold break leads to off flavours. The ideal is about 20% of cold break should be allowed in the fermenter.

OK, how I get around the problem.

I run off about 40% of wort through CFC into a spare fermenter, let it stand for about 20 minutes, much of the break settles out. This wort goes into the main fermenter, starter is pitched, airpump is fired up and run intermittantly over the next six hours. The remaining 60% of wort is run off into spare fermenter (which is now empty,) allowed to settle overnight outside where the night time temp is close to zero during winter and added to the main fermenter the next morning.

This gives two benefits, control of the amount of cold break into main fermenter and strong starts to lager fermentation due to big starter into the 40% wort stepped up the next day.

Now that it is warming up and the night time temp is over 10 deg, I may vary this and add the remaining 60% about 3-4 hours after the first lot, rather than letting it sit around warm.

 

[Gout]

the wort that is going throught the chiller should be chilled quickly (from the CFC) and hence form a break, then pumped back into the kettle...

however i dont think it can be done quick enough to get a real whirlpool going

and this brain fart will stay as just that