Alex.Tas said:
Awesome information in this thread. Thanks to everyone involved.
One question to throw out there: do people think that adding pellet hops in loose help or hinder trub cone formation, or alternatively makes no difference.
I use a hop bag, but would be interested to know if throwing them in loose may help form a tight trub cone. obviously there would be more crud in the bottom of the kettle though because the hops aren't removed via the hop bag.
The reason i ask is that some of the best photos of i have seen are of trub cones that are greenish in colour.
If you are whirlpooling effectively it wont matter if the hops are loose or not, well not to the trub but you will get better utilisation out of the hops if they are free to move around in the wort, I have seen as much as 20% better sighted but in my experience it is probably more in the 10-15% range. Mind you its a reasonable saving on bittering hops.
Not based on research but my impression is that a cone with hops in sticks together better a bit like reinforcing.
tilt said:
MHB - this is something I haven't fully appreciated before.
I was under the impression that all break material has a negative impact on finished beer storage / flavour stability, clarity etc. as well as making it more difficult to rinse and re-use yeast.
For that reason I'd thought that in-line chillers (CFC and plate chillers used on the way to the fermentor) lead to all of the cold break ending up in the ferment and subsequent reduction in beer quality.
Snip
Can you expand on the statement in red above .... i.e. when are the times that we should avoid cold break, and when is it OK to include it, plus whats the critical point that it becomes an issue for beer quality?
Wort needs to have a certain amount of protein in for a couple of reasons, one is that protein is a vital part of the pallet fullness of beer, too little and the beer tastes gutless, another is head retention, too little of the right molecular weight protein and the beer wont hold a head, a third is that its a vital yeast nutrient, too little and the yeast will struggle to reach the right population.
The important part about yeast reproducing in the wort is that it consumes some of the protein, ideally all of the lipids, sterols and fatty acids that it needs and that we don't want in the beer as well as all the Oxygen. If all these factors come together we get a clean wort with all the potentially stability reducing components removed, we also get a lot of healthy happy yeast that rill rip through the sugars in short order.
Proteins and there are potentially millions of different proteins in a wort, are very much a two edged sword we want enough of some and none of others, we group proteins by size and it turns out that the ones we want the least are the bigger ones that condense first and wind up in hot break soonest. The ones we want most are either still in solution or do form cold break but the yeast will quite haply pull that apart and eat it.
There is too much cold break when it starts to coat the yeast inhibiting its life cycle or it flocks in the fermenter stripping out iso-alpha acids. To get that much is nearly impossible unless you are using very low grade malt (American 6-row which needs low protein diluents) or lots of low grade adjunct. In effect if you are using decent quality brewing ingredients you can forget all about cold break.
If you think you are having problems with too much residual break, boil a bit longer, more of the higher MW proteins will condense earlier but all the proteins will be reduced by longer boil times, in lab testing after 6 hours hot break is still forming, just less of it and made up of smaller protein.
If your wort sample is bright and clear and the flock in it settles quickly to the bottom you would be on the right track, any turbidity that wont settle - keep boiling!
if you want to reuse the yeast, I would make a good clean wort, pitch a decent starter of healthy yeast and rack 24-48 hours after the start of ferment.
Any unused break material, hop fragments and dead yeast will be left behind, crop the yeast at the end of fermentation 4-5 days, keep all of the yeast cake it as it will be pretty dam pure yeast.
Mark
