Last night was just one of those nights. Monster Mill trouble to begin with and then after chilling my batch, I noticed quite a bit more trub then normal. Everything else seem to be fine but it was a little more than I expected. My chilling method is a pre chiller which is coils submerged in an ice bucket which then feeds to double coil Chillers in the wort. I also do not use hop bags. I found that I really don’t like those and I could tell the difference in the beer between just dropping in my hops and using the bags.
I have given up on agonizing over Trub. I boil, add pellet hops to the boil, chill, do the best I can on swirl. It all ends up settled at the bottom of my 6.5 gallon glass carboys (10 gallon batch). After 2 weeks I transfer to a wide mouth 5 gallon Carboy and add leaf hops (in a bag). After secondary I rack to a spare sanitized keg then filter to 2nd sanitized keg using 1 micron filter flooding tanks with CO2 first. Many do not bother with filtering and rely on Cold Condition for final filtering.
Takes longer but works just as well.
I usually don’t get too worried about trub. I cold crash once primary is complete, then hit it with gelatin if it doesn’t look as clear as I want, then keg.
I’ve been using Cascade cones as of late… My old BIA Basket (roughly 5 gallon bucket size) is what I use with any kind of hops in the BK… After primary fermenting is done, I’m not afraid to dump pellets into the fermenter, even cones… I like to let the brew sit at room temp for a few days… Heck, I’ve even let it sit a week… I’ll then cold crash the fermenter… Time to rack into a keg, hoppy styles will get some hops in a bag, and again, let it sit at room temp a few more days… One thing I’ve noticed with, cones in a bag, in the keg, and some weight ( I feel a Dr. Seuss moment right there) that my brews clear up very nicely after a few pints… Maybe be a standard procedure for me… Perhaps… Sneezles61
I was wondering if I should take the coils out after temp has been reached and give it some really good swirls and let it settle for a half hour. Maybe I would get a more defined separation at the bottom.
Giving it a good whirlpool after chilling and allowing it to settle will definitely give you a more defined layer. A little trub is good for yeast health and at our size is negligible.
Same here. I use hop bags only for dry hopping in the keg.
For massively hoppy beers I do rack with a large sanitized hop bag affixed to the outlet tubing. (I had racked a number of times with the bag on the inlet side directly around the auto siphon, trying to keep hop debris out of the siphon/tubing also, but eventually had an episode where the process led to an oxidized IPA. Live and learn)
