clarify wort – Olde Town Mash Paddler's https://otmp.club Wed, 14 Apr 2021 21:35:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://i0.wp.com/otmp.club/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-OTMP-logo-tiny-web-site-title-alpha-background-1-1.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 clarify wort – Olde Town Mash Paddler's https://otmp.club 32 32 160100051 How do you harvest your clearest wort? https://otmp.club/forums/topic/how-do-you-harvest-your-clearest-wort/ Wed, 14 Apr 2021 21:35:16 +0000 https://otmp.club/forums/topic/how-do-you-harvest-your-clearest-wort/ I know that some brewers don’t worry too much about collecting clear wort to the fermenter, simply allowing trub to flow freely. I am of the mind that if professional brewers are removing trub, then I should too. After losing my source for whole-leaf hops last year, I was forced to shift to pelletized hops. I was surprised by how difficult is has been to get clear wort from the brew kettle as a result. But the pellet hops aren’t the issue here (I use a hop basket). Rather it’s the trub (hot break material if I’m using my counter-flow or both hot and cold break if I’m using my immersion chiller). A portion of this trub now seems to flow largely unabated to the pick-up tube. When I used whole leaf and a hop screen, the settled hops formed a really nice “filter” of sorts, and I used to get clear wort from beginning to end.

I’ve tried whirlpooling and I agree with others on this forum who suggest whirlpooling to pile trub in the center of the kettle is an urban myth; my whirlpooling efforts seem to support this notion and the trub gets stirred up and re-suspeneded as soon as I fire up the whrilpool pump! All of this being said, I’ve managed to come up with clear wort for “part” of my runoff (see attached pic of my recent Best Bitter). This pic represents only the middle part of the runoff though. It seems that at the beginning of wort collection I get a burst of trub, but after the pick-up tube drills out a half-dollar sized hole, everything is quite clear for a bit. Then towards the end of collection it gets real cloudy again (so much so that I have had to dump the last 4 to 7 quarts!). I’ve had better luck with lagers, but I think that has to do with the “type” of break material you get when you do step-mashing and decoctions. The trub tends to settle more tightly than brews made with a single-temp infusion and well-modified ale malt. I’d really like to hear from the braintrust here. What are you doing that I can learn from?

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