[charlie]

Agree some hops and trub are not an issue. You are probably best not pouring it all in though.

But may be most of it, though.  I learned many years ago that trub is a source of FAN.  A couple informal tests have foundthat beer fermented on trub was clearer and preferred by tasters compared to beer with trub removed.  I'm not saying that's absolute truth, but it matches my experience.

+1. I was as anal as a newbie home brewer can be. Our first club president was days away from a PhD in microbiology when I expressed concern about trub in the fermentor. His reply was; "Don't worry about it. Trub is yeast food". So I don't, because he was right. I invariably get excellent fermentation rates.

Charlie

[tommymorris]

My PicoBrew Z1 removes the hops since they are in cages. The break gets into the fermenter. Someone mentioned longer shelf life if you remove trub. My wife would love for my beer to sit around and not get drank but my little 2.5 gallon kegs last 1 month max after I start drinking them. They are cold from the day I package. That short shelf life seems to allow leaving the break material in the fermenter.

[BrewBama]

Well, one thing is for sure: transferring the whole kettle contents,  trüb and all, will result in better brewhaus efficiency over leaving wort behind with the trüb.

I try to leave the majority out but inevitably some gets past me. I don’t strain it or anything. Just whirlpool and drain until I hit the 5.5 gal mark in the FV. What gets past gets past.


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[majorvices]

there is definitely a correlation between trub proteins (lipids) and shelf life but it is probably only really relevant in professional brewing applications. If you are using Brew Tan B you are probably wasting it by using the entire contents of the trub.

I do agree that for the most part this is a RDWHAHB. At the new brewery I am working at I pumped the contents from the bottom of the whirlpool as opposed to the side ports. The head brewer kinda freaked out a bit because I pumped some hops and trub over but in a taste test the beer was absolutely fine. As I knew it would be.

[Cro-magnon Man]

This is all excellent advice. Thankfully I have already learned the benefits of kegging and so I’m not too worried about about cold side oxidation. I’m about to put the kettle on the burner in a few minutes (yay!) and I will whirlpool and see what happens. I have a pretty impressive flame on my homemade burner (it’s the guts of an old natural gas boiler) but putting the valve side off to the side of the flame sounds good. How far from the bottom should the valve be? I imagine there are a myriad of options for attaching a screen or filter of some kind to the valve inside the kettle. Also good to hear that some Trub is even beneficial. I always have tons of hop material though since I generally put about 8oz or more in a hop stand plus another 5 or more as dry hops. So perhaps my battle is really against hop matter. So I’m sure I could use a muslin bag. Now to choose the hops. Dang I love hops.

[denny]

Agree some hops and trub are not an issue. You are probably best not pouring it all in though.

But may be most of it, though.  I learned many years ago that trub is a source of FAN.  A couple informal tests have foundthat beer fermented on trub was clearer and preferred by tasters compared to beer with trub removed.  I'm not saying that's absolute truth, but it matches my experience.

Yeah, I know trub is a source of FAN. You don't need half of it though to get more than enough.

Good point. 

[majorvices]

This is all excellent advice. Thankfully I have already learned the benefits of kegging and so I’m not too worried about about cold side oxidation. I’m about to put the kettle on the burner in a few minutes (yay!) and I will whirlpool and see what happens. I have a pretty impressive flame on my homemade burner (it’s the guts of an old natural gas boiler) but putting the valve side off to the side of the flame sounds good. How far from the bottom should the valve be? I imagine there are a myriad of options for attaching a screen or filter of some kind to the valve inside the kettle. Also good to hear that some Trub is even beneficial. I always have tons of hop material though since I generally put about 8oz or more in a hop stand plus another 5 or more as dry hops. So perhaps my battle is really against hop matter. So I’m sure I could use a muslin bag. Now to choose the hops. Dang I love hops.

If you are using hop pellets they will probably clog just about any filter. The Denny Con truick of using the stainless steel wrapping of a toilet return line works wonderfully with whole hops IME. I'd say about 1.5 to 2 inches from the bottom for the hole and then just tilt the kettle. You definitely DON'T want open flame on any weldless gasket FYI.

[Visor]

   Your hole obviously must be high enough to be above the curve at the bottom of the kettle. My suggestion is to find a long stainless street elbow for a dip tube and locate the hole so the intake of the ell is 1/4" or so from the kettle bottom.

[Cro-magnon Man]

So I did brew an extract ipa today. I put whirfloc in 10-15 min before knockout and at first wondered if I should have put it in sooner. I say this bc last week (two batches in one week!) which was all grain, I used a looong boil (like 2 hours, for a few reasons) and noticed that the hot break was very coagulated and the wort was clear after sitting for only a few minutes. I truthfully don’t remember when I put in the whirfloc. That wasn’t the case today. I made a whirlpool, covered it and let it sit for maybe 10 minutes. Okay it was closer to 5 bc I was getting hangry and running out of time. The hot break didn’t really settle. Racked it anyway into the fermenter, but instead of using a hopstand, I put my 8oz of cascade and Medusa in the fermenter. What I learned today was that it was not Trub, but hops that were causing my 2+ gallon loss and that I shouldn’t be concerned about it anyway, and that a 15 gallon kettle with a ball valve is on my wishlist.

[brewsumore]

I am in the camp of liking a little and not a lot of trub + no hop debris carry over to my fermenters.  I do 10-gal batches, and use a 20-gallon kettle with ball valve.  I used to use a 15.5 gal keggle, and so for some beers, the 2nd fermenter received a fairly high percentage of break + hops spooge to collect the last ~2 gallons of wort.
 
Depending on how many pellet hops I use (of course IPA has way-y-y lots more) I will brew anywhere from a 12-gallon to 13.5-gallon batch in my 20-gallon kettle.  I do not whirlpool.  After chilling and removing my immersion chiller, I let the beer settle 30-40 minutes.  And I manipulate my mash and sparge water to hit desired pH range which I believe helps flocc out the hot+cold break. 

Then I run off an 11-gallons of settled wort (5.5 gallons into each of 2 buckets), leaving most of the excess wort behind that has the majority of hop/break spooge.  Additionally, I run off through my ball valve (no filtration) but first through a sanitized fine mesh kitchen strainer into the fermenters.  This means that if I am down to the level of break and hops spooge to hit my wort yield volume in the second fermenter, that I am filtering out much of the break material and all of the hop debris solids. 

With this method, I have found that both fermenters yield a similar tasting beer, whereas before, if the second fermenter filled received a fair amount of the kettle spooge (from the bottom of the settled wort in the kettle), sometimes it tasted different than the first runoff fermenter of beer.  I admit that sometimes the 2nd fermenter beer was worse, and sometimes better, since depending on how much trub went in it differently affected the fermentation kinetics.  Overall, I believe that the higher % spooge beer was typically lesser quality beer than the first runoff fermenter. 

Plus, it's just considerably faster and easier to runoff into buckets not having to constantly filter out trub, knock out the residue from the strainer, and then run off some more wort through it.  Normally, even the first fermenter gets a little trub as you start the wort runoff.

[Wilbur]

So I did brew an extract ipa today. I put whirfloc in 10-15 min before knockout and at first wondered if I should have put it in sooner. I say this bc last week (two batches in one week!) which was all grain, I used a looong boil (like 2 hours, for a few reasons) and noticed that the hot break was very coagulated and the wort was clear after sitting for only a few minutes. I truthfully don’t remember when I put in the whirfloc. That wasn’t the case today. I made a whirlpool, covered it and let it sit for maybe 10 minutes. Okay it was closer to 5 bc I was getting hangry and running out of time. The hot break didn’t really settle. Racked it anyway into the fermenter, but instead of using a hopstand, I put my 8oz of cascade and Medusa in the fermenter. What I learned today was that it was not Trub, but hops that were causing my 2+ gallon loss and that I shouldn’t be concerned about it anyway, and that a 15 gallon kettle with a ball valve is on my wishlist.

5 gallon nylon paint strainer bags are $3 for 2 or 3 and do a great job with pellet hops. Let me know how you like Medusa, I've been tempted to try that one.

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[Cro-magnon Man]

I have brewed many an IPA with many different hops. This is my first run with Medusa and so I am anxious to taste this. I will say this- NEVER have I smelled a more delicious hop. I almost started eating it.

[TXFlyGuy]

How about putting a 300 micron SS screen in the bottom of the boil kettle? Would that not catch most or all of the Trub?
My whole leaf hops always filtered out almost all of the undesirables.

[narvin]

How about putting an300 micron SS screen in the bottom of the boil kettle? Would that not catch most or all of the Trub?
My whole leaf hops always filtered out almost all of the undesirables.

You can try but I think the break might clog it.  I used this mesh, which has more open surface area, on a hop stopper and it worked well with pellets.  However, I used a plate chiller at the time; other people have said that cold break from an immersion chiller clogged it for them.

[TXFlyGuy]

How about putting a 300 micron SS screen in the bottom of the boil kettle? Would that not catch most or all of the Trub?
My whole leaf hops always filtered out almost all of the undesirables.

You can try but I think the break might clog it.  I used this mesh, which has more open surface area, on a hop stopper and it worked well with pellets.  However, I used a plate chiller at the time; other people have said that cold break from an immersion chiller clogged it for them.

If a 300 micron is too tight, maybe a 400 micron would do better and not clog up.