So I just got done brewing a partial mash IPA. There was about 7 lbs of grain in a partial mash of about 2 gallons and I sparged with 1.25 gallons. Ended up with about 2.5 gallons of wort. Then I added about 5 oz of hops (cascade, simcoe, and columbus both pellet and loose).
Anyway, I always strain my wort when I transfer to the primary and actually had to clean the strainer about 4 times because of the hops and trub. My beer has been sitting for about 2 hours and there is already 3 inches of trub on the bottom of a 6 gallon fermentor. Did I do something wrong? How do I limit the trub build up in the primary? I’m not too concerned except that I am losing about 3 inches of beer and will have less to bottle with later.
The cure for this is to ferment in buckets, then you can’t see it! Most likely it’s just break material clinging to the side of the carboy at the bottom, the yeast will move it around and it will settle out.
I used to a fanatic about trub… Now, I relax and don’t worry about trub except for lagers. For them, I just let it settle overnight (8-10 hours) in the fridge set to 32F and rack off next morning and pitch yeast. Works extremely well.
For IPA’s I just bump recipe up from 5.5 to 6 gallons (10%) and take the hops along for the ride.
Have grain bag in your strainer to pour through. This will collect most of the trub and increase the amount of wort in the fermentor. With this set up a second person is handy to hold the bag unless you rig up a stand to attach the bag to.
I used to freak out about break materials floating around in my carboy and have the same amount of trub that you’re talking about right now at the bottom of my belgian IPA. But, time and again, everything has settled out and I ended up with beer. No complaints yet :mrgreen:
Most likely it’s just break material clinging to the side of the carboy at the bottom, the yeast will move it around and it will settle out.