Strain or No Strain?

Just completed my second all-grain home brew. My first brew I finished the boil, stuck a colander over the primary and poured it in. Colander collected a lot of the hops. Beer turned out great (I enjoyed it). My second brew, I just poured everything into the primary. Any thoughts or advice on this?

I've never strained, everything settles out just fine. I use irish moss in the kettle, and my beers come out nice and clear. Different ways to skin a cat.

I dump everything in.

Yep, Irish Moss here too.
I cool, whirlpool, and collect nice clean wort. Never had good luck straining... it seems like either the mesh is too big and lets a lot of junk in, or the mesh is too fine and clogs.
Cooling and whirlpooling is so much easier.

I've had the best results with bagging my kettle and whirlpool hops for my IPA's. These 5 gallon capacity nylon mesh paint strainer bags are available at Home Depot for like $2.

I have found that keeping the majority of old, used hops out of the primary, the better & fresher the flavor in the finalized beer. Even with straining, a good deal of green hop matter particulates still make their way into the fermentor. You can clearly see it settle in a layer above the tan trub. If they weren't strained out, this layer would be more substantial and you would lose some space in the primary. So, bagging my kettle hops helps me to avoid these two pitfalls... especially in recipes that use a ton of hops.

I used to strain thinking it would help out my beers but I have figured out that using whirfloc tablets/irish moss and cold crashing everything turns out the same anyways.

I strain for two reasons.

One to get most of the hops out because I'm reusing yeast and I don't want to bother with washing. (I make small batches and I'm considering just making a starter and pitching half of it and stepping it up/pitching half etc...) If I go that way I won't have to strain the hops.

Second is to help aerate. Again, I could probably do away with this step with the help of a whisk or slotted spoon but then what would that fancy strainer do? )))

I strain using this 10" conical fine mesh strainer. Clears the hops, trub, and aerates wort during transfer. I tried whirlpooling but just couldn't get it to work right, might be my immersion chiller or my kettle pick-up valve, or my kettle dimensions or a combination of all three but for me straining works and whirlpool doesn't.



Here is a picture of half a yeast cake from a recent batch. This is a quart jar, was full of beer and yeast, swirled up from bottom of bucket and dumped in. Then settled in fridge. Has not been washed. I see no hop junk in there.

eric19312 said:

I strain using this 10" conical fine mesh strainer. Clears the hops, trub, and aerates wort during transfer. I tried whirlpooling but just couldn't get it to work right, might be my immersion chiller or my kettle pick-up valve, or my kettle dimensions or a combination of all three but for me straining works and whirlpool doesn't.

Here is a picture of half a yeast cake from a recent batch. This is a quart jar, was full of beer and yeast, swirled up from bottom of bucket and dumped in. Then settled in fridge. Has not been washed. I see no hop junk in there.

Click to expand...

I use a keggle for boil and an immersion chiller. I've tried to stir to whirlpool but between the IC and my thermometer probe its hard to get a good whirlpool. Soon I'd like to get a pump, plate chiller, and install a whirlpool port on the keggle with a dip tube off the side. Either that or the Jaybird false bottom with the level three false bottom stand. I hear those work well. But would still like a whirlpool capability for hop stands.

+1 on the stainless strainer. Works great. Being a chef, this is known to me as a chinois (shin-wa). Seems to aerate well enough and is easy to clean (as long as you clean it right away).

A lot of great advice. Thank you all. Think I'll try something new each batch and see where it takes me.

@eric

That conical strainer you posted is called a Chinois (pronounced, Shin Wah). They are commonly used in fine dining restaurant kitchens. Good ones are quite expensive.

I would caution the prolonged use of a Chinois for holding and pressing solid matter since they are made of a delicate mesh weave and break very easily. They are meant to fine strain liquids and sauces.

If you want something more durable, use a China Cap. It looks like the same thing with bigger holes. The China Cap can be used in tandem with a Chinois as long as you place the Chinois on the bottom. The solid matter will get stuck in the China Cap, and the Chinois will fine strain the liquid.

You do not need to worry at all about prolonged use of a chinois for brewing. I have been using the same chinois at my restaurant for four years, the one before that lasted eight years. I used it three times today (citrus beurre blanc, Demi glacé, and lobster bisque). The things I put through mine are many, many times thicker than wort. Using it for brewing, I have only needed to swirl it around when it becomes filled with particulate and hop matter and the liquid will pass through without forcing anything down. Even if you pushed it through with a 2 oz ladle as I do with sauces every day, it would still last many hundreds of brew sessions before failing (usually what happens is the mesh separates from the steel band at the top where it is kind of crimped in between layers).

unitmonster. I am also a professional chef. 7 years in the business, trained in NYC, and current sous chef. I have a $60 chinois for home use. I learned, the hard way, that using it to strain solid matter will begin to stress the fine mesh material and cause small holes.

All of these things are liquids -- "citrus beurre blanc, Demi glacé, and lobster bisque". Several ounces or pounds of solid hop matter is definitely not a liquid. Pushing this through a chinois is an awful idea.

Go back and take a look at his picture that he posted with all of the hop gunk he gathered and pressed in the chinois. It is post #8. Continue to use your chinois like that, and it will have a very short life span.

Wow, sorry i hit a nerve there. I was just relating my personal experience with this tool I use every day. I wasn't calling you out or asking for a resume. Not even saying you are wrong. Just giving my honest opinion. As for you telling me that my sauces are liquids, thanks. And I am usually trying to remove the tiny solids from them, not force solids through the chinois, that would be quite difficult to say the least. In the case of brewing, the op is trying to remove tiny solid material from the wort, a perfect job for a chinois.

It's cool. But it was obvious you were challenging what I wrote without seeing the photo on the previous page, so I retorted.

I did see the photo, but thanks for calling me a retard again in a roundabout way. I still do not understand why anybody would want to push that through the chinois, you just flip it in the garbage. You want to remove that matter, not smash it up even finer by forcing it through tiny holes and back into the wort. That would defeat the whole purpose of straining in the first place. People use irish moss and similar things to make those particles larger and heavier and therefore easier to separate. Not to smash them back up and into the wort again. There's maybe an ounce of liquid left in that. That's great you're a sous chef. Maybe with some hard work and dedication, and paying attention, and not flipping out when you don't understand a conversation, you can work your way up to my level in the culinary field. Peace.

I <3 the internet. Only in such a place can a simple question about straining wort devolve into this.

unitmonster said:

I still do not understand why anybody would want to push that through the chinois, you just flip it in the garbage. You want to remove that matter, not smash it up even finer by forcing it through tiny holes and back into the wort. That would defeat the whole purpose of straining in the first place. People use irish moss and similar things to make those particles larger and heavier and therefore easier to separate. Not to smash them back up and into the wort again. There's maybe an ounce of liquid left in that. That's great you're a sous chef. Maybe with some hard work and dedication, and paying attention, and not flipping out when you don't understand a conversation, you can work your way up to my level in the culinary field. Peace.

Click to expand...

I doubt he was trying to push it through the holes. Rather, he was trying to catch the solids and press any remaining liquid leftover. Maybe if you paid attention to the conversation from the start you wouldn't have attempted to act like you knew what you were saying, which didn't even apply in this situation, before calling someone out who actually had a clue.

Hmm not a professional chef here. I did buy my strainer at a restaurant supply place in NYC, think it was between $30 and $40.

I never press on the solids that it catches. I do flip them like pancakes in a pan and let them fall back in which sort of has them pressing on themselves.

As the strainer starts to clog I sort of shuffle it in a circle (clockwise) which causes the liquid to press against the sides by centrifugal force and push a bit more out.

On a recent beer I had to dump it about 5 times before draining my full kettle, that was more than a quart of hop gunk...

I clean it after straining by rinsing then putting it into a kettle of boiling water and sloshing it about. It is the same 5 gal pot I had going before using it to preheat my immersion chiller and after that to sanitize the strainer before using it.

The pic I shared before was a brew with a relatively small hop bill - maybe 2 oz. Here was one that had 5+ oz in the kettle...I was unable to use pellets for one of the hops in the boil and straining was an adventure...

Currently I'm only doing 1-gallon BIAB, so the amount material I have to strain is a small amount. I just wanted to know what other brewers were doing.

Apologies to the OP for letting myself get sucked into Bob's game. Glad you received some useful info. I love the treasure trove of info in the past threads of this forum. The homebrewing community is so helpful and most everyone is willing to intelligently discuss different techniques and methodology.

@eric: I am happy to see that you use the exact technique that I employ with more than satisfactory results.

And for those of you unfamiliar with bobbrews own particular brand of lunacy, here is a link to a thread I came across a month ago while looking for info on FWHing. What has potential as an intelligent discussion on the subject is cut short as bob makes his first appearance as poster #7. What follows is 5 or 6 pages of his now signature mudslinging/circular logic/penis measuring. I am disappointed that I did not recognize his username while trying to have an adult debate here, and was brought down to his level.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/first-wort-hops-393700/

Happy brewing everyone!

Lol, funny thing is, as arrogant as he is, he still proved you wrong since you neglected to take into account the picture on the first page and the ridiculousness of collecting a bunch of solid hop matter in a chinois. You then challenged him indirectly by basically saying his advice was useless.

It's kind of common sense that you shouldn't sieve or press solids with such a fine strainer when the mesh material is not build for that use. And it makes total sense that you should strain any solids with a wider mesh sieve first. I've seen bobbrews post in many IPA threads. If you can look past the arrogance (a common trait of most pro chefs) you can see that he actually knows what he's talking about. With every genius, there is also a little bit of lunacy.

In general though, I get a kick out of these debates on HBT. Most of them (unlike this one) is super preferential and sometimes the argument is like trying to tell someone their favorite color isn't blue, when in fact it is. The topic of FWH is based on personal preference. Both parties have valid points for it's advantages and downfalls. You will rarely change the opinions of people's tried and true personal methods. Use your head and your palate to decide what you want to believe. No need to get into a penile swinging contest for preference based techniques. I guess you also have to understand that homebrewers can be super passionate. So take our advice in public forums with a grain of salt.

Sigh. I would not have started talking about a chinois had I not seen that pic. That is obvious. In no part of his post does Eric state that he pressed the trub through or into his strainer. In fact, he describes his method a few posts ago exactly as I described it as putting no undue stress or strain on the chinois, therefore posing no threat to his strainer lasting many brews. So please tell me what i am missing here, and where exactly bob proves me wrong (or "proves" anything for that matter) by providing solid evidence that using a chinois in this manner will cause it to fail. That is the point of his that I disagreed with. That is how a debate works, if you want to counter someone's position, you provide evidence to the contrary, this has not been done here by Bob. I already backed up my point by relating my experience of years of daily use of the same chinois in much more grueling conditions than the homebrewer would encounter. You would have to brew multiple batches a day for years and hand it off to a slacker dishwasher guy who will generally treat it with little respect to clean and put it away every time to come close to simulating these conditions. So please tell me where bob "proves"that a chinois will not hold up. Bob is the one who initially injected this assumption of someone pressing anything into or through the chinois into the conversation in his first post. Listen, Bob's hotheaded ways put us all down this path. At no point did I take off my virtual glove, slap him in his virtual face, and challenge him to a virtual duel. I merely provided a counterpoint to his statement, backed up by my personal experience in this matter. The mature thing to do on his part would have been to simply let it go and let other readers decide for themselves. If I wanted a personal attack, or his resume, I would have addressed him directly by preceding my post with "@bobbrews:". I did not do this, my post was directed at everyone else that does not freak out when disagreed with.

And I just want to defend my chinois now that I know what to call it...this thing rocks for straining hops and break. The mesh in mine is really pretty sturdy. One of these days I'm gonna shoot a video and put it up here for the doubters. I read all these threads on paint strainers and hop bags and hop spiders...I say let your hops be free and strain them at the end!

Huh..Shin Wah? He is the Chinaman that owns the Wong Fook Hing Book Store, Cat House and Egg Roll Emporium on 98th and Pacific in Tocoma. Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup.

pmhildreth said:

Just completed my second all-grain home brew. My first brew I finished the boil, stuck a colander over the primary and poured it in. Colander collected a lot of the hops. Beer turned out great (I enjoyed it). My second brew, I just poured everything into the primary. Any thoughts or advice on this?

Click to expand...

Strain it with the colander. Reuse the yeast cake. Why do you want a bunch of trub in your bucket or carboy?

For a different take, I use whole hops in a hop bag. Nothing is in the boil kettle when the boiling is finished outside of some hot break, which is minimal.

I also put one of these bags on the end of the tube when doing the lauter from my mash/lauter tun. Nothing gets past the bag (after vorlauf) from the mash to the boil kettle. Clear wort all the way through for a few bucks.