Hop spyders

Who uses one…and what do you think?

I’ve been doing 5-gal, full boils for many years now. I was given a homemade hop spider for Christmas and have used it several times now. Generally, it just feels like more work to me. One more thing to clean. Gets in the way of my immersion chiller. Requires some additional stirring to get the hops submerged and dispersed. One more chance to burn myself as I try to extract it from the boil. However, despite that, it’s kind of nice when making a batch with more than a few ounces of hops. I don’t have to wort about my spigot clogging when I drain my kettle into my fermentor.

Lately my girlfriend and i have been straining hops out of wort precarboy…and its kind of a pita…plus it would be easier to harvest more yeast this way :slight_smile:

I agree with you there. I’ve always preferred to keep the hops out of the fermentor. I too have always run my wort through a big stainless strainer on its way out of the kettle. I find it simpler than the spyder, except for recipes with really large amounts of hops.

I started putting a copper pot scrubber pad around my BK drain dip tube which is a piece of copper tubing with an elbow and flattened on the end. This allows me to pin the scrubber in place against the wall of the BK. I have used it for light hop batches so far using both pellet and cone hops. I plan to do some IPA’s with cones from my garden this fall. I’ll let you all know how it works out. Another thing I’ve learned is when using a lot of hops, it seems to help to slow the transfer down which prevents the hop debris from packing as hard and clogging the plumbing.

Oh don’t be afraid of the hop trub monster, leave him alone, and he’ll settle to the bottom. When you rack, be very quiet and he won’t even wake up to poop in yer brew! I’ve even tried a trub ring at the bottom to help MINIMIZE trub into the fermenter. I’ve come to accept that with very hoppy brews, I will be sure to have an extra 1/2 gallon to leave behind with the trub monster… Sneezles61

I wanted to remove one session of siphoning from my process so i just dump from the kettle into carboy and the green trub monster frustrates me :slight_smile:

Do they affect hop utilization?

I just bag the hops in paint strainer bags. I’ve heard you should increase hops by 10% if you bag or use a hop spider. I never have.

Used it today…and loved it.