Braumeister Whirlpooling/filtering

[TheDecline]

Im sick of all the wort im wasting every time i brew on my braumeister. I need to figure out a good way of getting more of the stuff below the outlet without pulling up all the crap at the bottom.

has anyone successfully made a whirlpool for a BM?

any other good ideas on seperating wort from trub?

currently i hold one of the fine mesh screens from the malt pipe in front of the hole while I drain the last bit of the BM and usually put a BIAB bag in the opening of my fermenter and pour the wort through it but im still getting a fair amount of undesirables in my beer.

 

[jeffmeh]

While I cannot answer your question, IME the trub is nothing to worry about. It will all settle out with time. I BIAB, no-chill, and often just throw everything in the fermentor. I do normally cold crash, and sometimes add gelatin, but the beer always ends up clear.

 

[TheDecline]

While I cannot answer your question, IME the trub is nothing to worry about. It will all settle out with time. I BIAB, no-chill, and often just throw everything in the fermentor. I do normally cold crash, and sometimes add gelatin, but the beer always ends up clear.

Well maybe im doing something wrong that i dont know about or maybe you're just more patient than me. I usually use a whirlfloc or irish moss and cold crash but it still takes weeks in the keg to get it decently clear. maybe i should rack it off another time.

 

[jeffmeh]

Well maybe im doing something wrong that i dont know about or maybe you're just more patient than me. I usually use a whirlfloc or irish moss and cold crash but it still takes weeks in the keg to get it decently clear. maybe i should rack it off another time.

It might just be the patience thing, but here is my process, post-boil. Note that often I manually whirlpool with a paddle, but I have had my drain get stuck and resorted to pouring the kettle through a funnel into the fermentor, trub and all.
1) Let the wort come down to 190F (the recommended upper range for my HDPE Winpaks)
2) Drain into a Winpak 6 gallon vessel and invert it a few times to let hot wort sanitize it (I do sanitize it prior with StarSan, but it's easy enough to add a bit of overkill)
3) Let cool to pitching temperatures overnight
4) Shake up the Winpak to oxygenate the wort
5) Pitch yeast
6) Attach a blow-off tube to the Winpak
7) Wait at least 3 weeks to let it ferment out and condition
8) Lower the temp to 33F (sometimes add gelatin) and wait 3 days to a week
9) Rack from the Winpak to keg, with a paint strainer bag rubber-banded to the input of the auto-siphon

Note that I have also sometimes added gelatin to the keg if I omitted it in step 8, with great success. I always end up with clear beer.

 

[horseinmay]

I don't know if it's cheating or not, but I'll second the use of gelatin. It really works.

 

[brewbush]

What I found to significantly reduce the amount of trub in my braumeister is using paint strainer bags on a home made hop-spider.

I got a 4-inch piece of PVC and attached 4 long stainless steel threaded rods to it. This sits on the top of the unit and I attach a paint strainer bag from home depot to the bottom with a large turn-key clamp.

When I drain the braumeister after cooling, I just hold the hose with one hand and tip the unit forward to get everything out, trub and all. I don't worry about whirlpooling and no issues at all.

 

[TheDecline]

What I found to significantly reduce the amount of trub in my braumeister is using paint strainer bags on a home made hop-spider.

I got a 4-inch piece of PVC and attached 4 long stainless steel threaded rods to it. This sits on the top of the unit and I attach a paint strainer bag from home depot to the bottom with a large turn-key clamp.

When I drain the braumeister after cooling, I just hold the hose with one hand and tip the unit forward to get everything out, trub and all. I don't worry about whirlpooling and no issues at all.

See if I were to dump trub and all into the fermenter my beer would take months to clear. Maybe I'll try gelatin and build a hop spider.

 

[horseinmay]

The trub settles out overnight. If you rack it into secondary after fermentation slows, you'll be able to get rid of 99% of the material. The gelatin pretty much 'polishes' the beer, by sticking to yeast and protein particles, and making clumps that are big enough to settle out in a few short days at conditioning temperatures. All of that stuff would settle out on it's own in 2-3 weeks without gelatin.

 

[jeffmeh]

I edited my previous post to add that when I rack to keg I put a paint strainer bag around the input of the autosiphon.