Post that irish red recipe when you have a minute. Been trying to perfect a recipe for a red ale for a while and never got one I was happy with.
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Same way I always do. Just pumping it and letting it splash into the fermenters. Now that I think about it there wasn’t as much foam on top as normal once I was done…
Both fermenters read 54 this morning on the fermometers and the swamp water temp was 54. I pulled the lids, sanitized my thermopen and they both read 54 near the surface…perfect…nice 1/4" of krauesen on each…
So…my guess…I used water that was already in the swamp coolers at room temp…about 70ish…must’ve take a couple days for the temps to equalize…or my first guess…the wort was as cool as the swamp cooler water and the fermometers just weren’t reading correctly until it came up in range…more ammo in the push for a temp controlled lagering chamber!
I use buckets and my process is pump or pour through a strainer or colander which opens it up a bit. Warm the slurry up to room temperature and pour that in another bucket . Then pour the wort hard between the 2 buckets a few times. Even my lager generally start in a couple hours
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Yea I’ve thought about pumping it through a strainer, which I used to pour through, but it’s always seemed well aerated when i’m done pumping.
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Here is something I’m going to try with my lagers. I usually chill my lagers down to mid 60F the put in my cold spot to chill it to under 60F. This generally takes a couple hours. I notice how it’s dropped alot of stuff out and I try to decant into my 2nd bucket but generally end up with all the crap anyway. Someone on here mentioned they let it settle out then rack it off the crap into the fermenter. I could let it settle in the pot but I prefer to get it out of the pot and wash everything while the wort is chilling further. Just putting it out there everyone has their own process. Mine is a little different for a 10 or 15 gallon batch obviously.
I’ve never concerned myself with the trub, hotbreak, coldbreak, etc that gets into the fermenter. I do bag hops so there’s little hop debris in my wort.
I generally don’t either for ales
Since I’ve got a false bottom for my kettle I notice the hops bunch up on it and act as a natural strainer. Sometimes with a lot of hops in the kettle I have to disturb what has gathered on it to get it to finish siphoning.
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Why do you have a false bottom in your kettle?
I recall he does a BIAB so… kinda hard to remove it when theres hot wort? Just a guess… Sneezles61
Fair enough
It came with the kettle so I used it when I BIAB anyway and it does keep the 90% of the hops out of my fermentor. So instead of buying a hop spider I’ve kept using it. The remaining 10% get caught in a kitchen strainer onto of my funnel.
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That is a great Idea! I assume it is one of the SS mesh gadgets that is somewhat funnel shaped and just drops in the sink drain. I had a snap in screen that went in my bug funnel but the mesh was so fine it clogged every time .
I’ve used a false bottom in my kettle when I BIAB 5 gal batches. If I try to use it with 10 gal batches it puts the grain bed too high for the water level unless I want to change my water/grain ratios. Mine has a handle on it so I’d fish it out with my spoon.
In the past when I was pouring wort to the fermenters I used a stainless steel double mesh strainer. It has a long handle and I can just set it on top of the bucket and pour. I used it once or twice when I started bagging hops and pumping wort. It didn’t catch much of anything so I retired it.
My next purchase is likely a SS hop basket to use in the boil and replace my paint strainer bags.
I’ve always used a 12" false bottom centered in the bottom of my 15 gallon kettle, and I even whirlpool. This was primarily because I was sick of my Shirron plate chiller clogging. Now that I use a coiled counter-flow chiller, it isn’t as big of a concern, but I still like seeing the cone of hops at the end.
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Well I think that makes sense. I always thought about false bottoms for the tun. I thought it would effect the boil in the kettle
The 12" doesn’t cover enough of the bottom to affect the boil in mine, but a friend of mine used to use a Blichmann false bottom in his BoilerMaker kettle, and that definitely created some big gurgles of air every few seconds.
I threw out the fine mesh that came with my strainer. The strainer I use is more like a nice pasta strainer with a handle. I used to use it exclusively before I got the false bottom. I am thinking that the wort being filtered through the hops in the false bottom gets a last bit of utilization
I used to use a trub ring in the bottom of my first BIAB set up… It really caught alot of stuff… Not all…
I’m not so worried any more, now that I have a parallel CFC… The tubing the wort runs through is 1/2" copper and I can pull the silicone tubing off to see/clean if I need… Wait a minute… Aren’t Pils not as … hoppy? 
Sneezles61
Brewing this today… I’ve got a half pound of Saaz to work with… All pilsner malt… 18 lbs… 10 gallon brew… Pre boil at 1.036… Sneezles61
Pre mash water corrected to 5.8pH… ended at 5.5pH… Close enough…
I can’t call the FWH that cause… well, my kettle has the full volume… Pre Boil Hops? PBH…
- So yesterday I was worried sick that I might scorch my wort… My boil was very dismal… almost non existent… My gravity suffered… I used table sugar to get to my pre determined gravity… Its really fermenting along nicely… When it slows… marina hops in one of the fermenters…
