Whirlpooling - How And When?

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PistolPatch

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I've been confused on whirlpooling since I started AGing which has been quite a while now so was pleased tonight to see that I am not the only one bewildered by it. On the BIABrewer.info forum, redlegger asked,

Hey everyone

just a quick question on whirlpooling.

My interpretion of whirlpooling is to basicly create a whirpool after the boil in the keggle/urn before transferring the wort. I just use my mash paddle. I have done it twice now (i stir for about 2-3 minutes, let it stop swirling then open the valve on the keggle and transfer to cube for NC)
I must say i havent seen any real difference between the whirpooled and non-whirlpooled wort's

Am i doing something wrong? Is my interpretation correct?

How do others whirlpool?

Cheers!

RL

P.S. I i used whirfloc in the two brews i 'whirlpooled'

My reply was...

Howdy redlegger ,

Your question is a great one. Whirlpooling is talked about all the time but brewers never say what their equipment set-up or process is. Let's take one simple example...

If you use an immersion chiller, can you whirlpool?

When using an immersion chiller, you dump it in the boil about 15 minutes before the end of the boil to sterilise it. If you want to whirlpool, you will have to pull your chiller out at the end of the boil, whirlpool and then throw your chiller back in. That's not right eh?

So, like you redlegger, I have more questions than answers.

There are heaps of obvious questions like the above that I haven't been able to find answers to and stupidly (in hindsight) that I haven't asked vigorously enough. Surely whether to whirlpool or not depends on what type of chiller, if any, that you are using and whether you syphon or use a tap.

I have whirlpooled only twice and I only bothered trying it when using a kettle with a tap. Once it worked well and once it didn't make any difference (I brew side by side on two identical rigs.) I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable whirlpooling when the wort was hot (HSA delusions probably) but I suspect that it was the hot whirlpool that worked!!!

You have given me the confidence to ask this question on AHB. Hold on...

I have asked the question in this thread [link to this thread].

Will report back here later with the results.

Great question RL,
PP

Whirlpooling is a familiar term amongst experienced all-grainers but a heap don't do it because their equipment doesn't suit and may therefore have the same lack of knowledge as myself. New all-grainers must be wondering what the hell it even is! (I can't even say whether it is done pre or post-chill!)

Can someone let us know...

1. Whether it should be done pre-chill or post-chill?
2. Whether it can work with immersion chillers?
3. Whether no-chillers should use it?
4. Whether syphoners hould use it?
5. How vigorous should your whirlpool be?
etc...

Hoping the answers here will save me a lot of head-scratching. What is obvious to some of you guys isn't to me and I reckon a few others.

Thanks,
PP
 
1. Pre-chill, however wait a few minutes after flameout as convection currents tend to screw with whirpooling and mess up all your hard work. So the deal is, wait a few minutes, whirpool, then chill. I'm sure you could whirlpool after chilling, but I find it easier pre-chill.
2. Yes, I use it with an immersion chiller. The immersion chiller is coiled copper and allows for me to stir up a whirlpool inside the coil of the copper (if that makes sense). There's definitely still room for whirlpooling without removing the immersion chiller.

That's all I got...
 
Nothing to add myself, but on the 17th may Brewstrong Q&A ep they cover whirlpooling to some extent. (about 9 minutes in if you want to skip the dialogue)
 
If you are chilling with an immersion chiller - then I say whirlpool after chill. You will chill your wort a lot faster if you can stir it about the place and mix up the chilled wort close to the coil with the hot wort further away from it. Get your wort nice and cold, pull out that chiller (which while its possible to whirlpool with it in there, does interfere a fair amount) then whirlpool. Rest it for 30mins - drain off clear wort. This will even allow some (but not much) of the cold break to be left behind. Your chill will be faster and your whirlpool work better, than if you try to whirlpool hot and with the chiller in place.

If you are using a CF chiller, a Plate Chiller or No-Chill - You need to wait for your convection currents to settle down. This will be a few minutes if you use an electric element, but can be 20mins or more if you use a big arsed gas burner.... all that metal holds a lot of heat and keeps on throwing it up into the kettle.... so does your maybe metal brew stand, the bricks you sit your burner on, etc etc etc. Anyway -- look in the kettle - If anything at all is moving about, wait longer. If it looks all still - time to go. Whirlpool and rest for 30mins.

In General

The 10mins rest I hear a lot of brewers give.. well, it might work for some, but you really need longer than that to be sure. Minimum 20mins and 30mins as far as I am concerned is what you need to wait.

Start draining slowly, you'll pull a little sediment at first, but then it should clear up... when it does, after a minute or so, slowly open your tap up - if you see sediment start to come through... slow down a bit and leave it there.

Keep an eye on the level of the wort.. you need to know when you are getting to the top of the trub cone. When you do get to the top of the trub cone, its vital to slow down your rate of drainage. If the level of the wort drops faster than wort can drain out of the trub cone.. then the cone will collapse and just turn into a pool of muck. Keep on draining - the cone will eventually start to pull apart a little no matter what you do... stop when you think more trub is coming through than you a happy with in your fermenter.

The amount of hops you use and whether they are flowers or pellets, will obviously drastically effect your trub cone. Flowers make for a much nicer and easier to work with trub cone.

Trub cone falls apart no matter how careful you are??

I was never able to get or maintain a good cone of trub in my converted kettle.. tried nearly everything. Just wouldn't work. Maybe the converted kegs aren't the right shape?

You are using the wrong amount of kettle finings (whirlfloc etc). Too little and also too much whirlfloc will change the nature of your trub. Get your finings just right and it helps to gel the break material together pretty well and gives a very firm trub cone. Too little or too much and it can go all fluffy and useless.

Whirlpooling does NOTHING that just letting the wort settle will not eventually do - its just a technique for more quickly being able to draw off clear wort, and for losing less volume of wort to your trub. In and of itself it will not improve your beer. It will not make more things settle out, it will not enhance the break... all it does it concentrate the break and hop material into a cone in the middle of the vessel, instead of in a thin layer across the bottom. That's it - purely a processing technique to make things faster and more efficient.

TB
 
I thought it was really important to cool the wort down quickly, if i have to wait 30 minutes before i start whirlpooling then another 30 minutes for the trub cone to form, isnt that bad for the wort?
 
Its standard practice for commercial brewers who use plate chillers. Its so they leave a cone of hot trub/hops in the centre of the kettle and not transfer it through the plate chiller.

In a commercial setup, which you can emmulate at home, the wort is drawn off from the kettle outlet and pumped back into the kettle about 1/3 of the way up the kettle wall. The wort is reintroduced at an angle of 30 degrees to the kettle wall. The flow rate needs to stay below 3m/s or you will break up your trub particles and they wont settle. I always understood the process involved a 10-15minute whirlpool immediately after flame off, followed by a 15-20minute rest. I didn't know about waiting for convection currents to settle down before beginning your whirlpool, makes sense though.

I've been doing a whirlpool as described above but for 10 minutes immediately after flame off followed by a 10 minute rest and i get pretty good cone formation. The wort then passes through a beerbelly hop screen and into my plate chiller. This process removes basically all particles that would potentially get stuck in my plate chiller.

I've not done it with an immersion chiller. I think its probably a bit of a waste of time and effort to be honest, for the small amount of extra wort you may recover. Prior to having a plate chiller i chilled with an immersion chiller. Once the wort was cooled i put the lid on the kettle and let the trub settle for about 30 minutes and the used a racking cane to transfer to the fermenter
 
If you are actively spinning the wort for 10mins... then thats doing the job of waiting for the convection currents to subside. What you are trying to avoid is having your cone form & stuff settle to the bottom and then be stirred straight back up by convection currents. With my electric element its 5 mins or less - with a 4 ring burner I used once the wort was still churning 25mins after flame out - whirlpooling would have been a waste of time and effort.

The other thing to remember is that the whirlpool doesn't magically suck stuff to the bottom of the pot... all it does is sweep things into the middle as they settle out. If things wouldn't settle to the bottom in 10minutes with no whirlpool, then they aren't on the bottom with a whirlpool. Quite the opposite.

Once the wort stops spinning.. your cone is as formed as its going to get.. the rest of the time is just waiting for gravity to pull anything else to the bottom in the normal old fashion and for things to "settle in" a little.

DMS could become an issue with longer whirlpool time.. its a compromise. More time equal better trub separation; but costs you...well, more time and also allows more time for DMS to form. If you have no DMS issues... then its no problems. If you start to notice them... then increasing your boil time from 60 to 90 minutes will help, as will reducing the time your wort remains hot. You just have to juggle your time and your results till you get what you are after.
 
pid1000096.jpg


Sorry - slow morning here..

I thought the principle was similar though, just give the keggle a stir so all the hop material ect gets drawn into the centre and you tap off clear wort from the outside. I allways end up with some in the cube but can leave most behind by carefull pouring into the fermenter.
I think having that extra raised ring in the bottom of the keg helps greatly to keep all the rubbish out of the cube though.
 
Anyone here use a paint mixer + drill instead of manually stirring? Im thinking about giving this a go next time.
 
Anyone here use a paint mixer + drill instead of manually stirring? Im thinking about giving this a go next time.

I like the idea of less labour.
But I think with a paint mixer you are generally try to "mix" the wort, moving sh*t all over the joint.
Theoretically - great idea
Practicality - reverse effects IMO.

Although some sort of centrifuge idea comes to mind, like they use for extracting honey from honeycomb similar to the theory in laboratories to seperate the thin and thick part of our blood etc. Mind you homebrewing is about getting the job done on the cheap not spending thousands on a machine lol. Good equipment doesn't mean you will brew the best beer. Im rambling now....
 
I spin the wort with a jigger I made to put in my cordless drill - gets a really good fast vortex going. Just need to make sure you don't go so fast you cavitate or that you are blending (and thus stirring air into) the wort. I don't whirpool for any period of time, just till its whizzing around. The action all happens as its slowing down anyway.
 
Anyone here use a paint mixer + drill instead of manually stirring? Im thinking about giving this a go next time.
yup. did it for the first time last brew day. piss easy to get a huge whirlpool going. i probably fell foul a few itmes of creating a vortex and mixing air in though. but this was post chill. so it shouldnt matter as youve got to aeratte the wort anyway.
 
Hey thanks a heap for the above answers to my long-winded question/s :).

That's great to know that it can be done cold. Doing 3 double-batches this weekend so I'll give at least two of them a "whirl" and see how it goes.

Much appreciated,
Pat
 
Okay, have just chilled and whirlpooled the first of three double-batches. Got a great whirlpool going with drill etc. Now, 40 minutes later, there is still foam on top and wort is coming out muddy after draining a litre of it.

Are you sure you can whirlpool cold???
 
So what's the real issue of getting a bit of break material and hops into the chilled wort?
I can't really notice a difference in my brewed beers, it all settles out in fermentation.

I made a an ESB that scored 41 in a comp in which I remember getting a whole heap of break material and hops into the cube, just to make up space in the cube.

I'm sure perfect whirlpooling is worthwhile, but I sometimes think it's one of the lesser variables in brewing. How wrong am I?
 
So what's the real issue of getting a bit of break material and hops into the chilled wort?
I can't really notice a difference in my brewed beers, it all settles out in fermentation.

I made a an ESB that scored 41 in a comp in which I remember getting a whole heap of break material and hops into the cube, just to make up space in the cube.

I'm sure perfect whirlpooling is worthwhile, but I sometimes think it's one of the lesser variables in brewing. How wrong am I?

Im with you. Break material is a useful yeast nutrient. When I do double batches I find the fermenter that has the hop trub in left in results in a hoppier tasting brew.

I really think the issue is whether you have the patience to let it all settle out in the fermenter. If youre the type that likes to go grain to brain in a week then you probably dont want this stuff in your fermenter, otherwise its all good.

cheers
Andrew.
 
What about with no-chill? I've been whirlpooling, though admittedly only for 15 minutes before transferring the cube, and it has sort of worked sort of not worked.

I notice on the other hand when transferring from cube to fermenter, if I'm careful the wort pours out extremely clear and I have a nice amount of crap left in the cube at the bottom that I leave behind.

So I'm thinking when using a cube the whirfloc causes the break to stick to the bottom of the cube anyway so I dunno if it's worth whirlpooling, or perhaps not even worth caring so much about leaving any material behind in the kettle.
 
okay in the interests of science ;), we decided to do the following...

a) Cold whirlpool

b)No whirlpool

c) Hot whirlpool with immersion chiller in

Haven't done the last brew yet but so far...

A has yielded 44lts. It had 2.2lts of cloudy run-off plus 5lts of trub.

B has yielded 49 lts. It had 2.5lts of cloudy run-off and 800mls of trub.

We just found a problem though. On the first batch the wort was running so badly, I turned the "pick up tube" up. So the above figures are bullshit. Maybe if I had turned the tube back down we would have got a lot less than 5lts of trub???

Just goes to show that even when you do a simultaneous side by side, you can't be really confident in your figures.

I mean I'm not even confident that Lloyd can remain upright for another hour - :eek:
 
Sounds like you are having a blast Patch. I'll be at the next one for sure!
 
I notice on the other hand when transferring from cube to fermenter, if I'm careful the wort pours out extremely clear and I have a nice amount of crap left in the cube at the bottom that I leave behind.

I've heard people say that cooling wort with break material at the bottom is bad. I've done both and haven't noticed any difference.

All of my brews have zero hot or cold break in them. It's easy to leave them behind so I do.

When I get some rapid cooling equipment, then I suppose I'll have break material in my fermenter.
 

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