Auger
Well-Known Member
I've been on my all-grain tree for about 8 months now. Things are working pretty well at this point, I'm getting a handle on the ins and outs of the system, but one thing that's been killing me is I'm always way low on the final volume. I.e. last night I did a 10gal batch of ESB and ended up just short of 8gal into the fermenter. I figured out a few errors in my volume calculations, the most glaringly obvious is that I'm losing way more volume in the boil kettle to trub and hop debris than I was accounting for.
My boil kettle is driving me nuts, I can't get a good way to get a clean runout to the primary without leaving (what seems like to me anyway) to be an excessive volume behind to capture the trub. My boil kettle is a 1/2bbl keg with a weldless fitting ball valve and a dip tube. I've tried:
- using a false bottom plate (clogged up with hop debris and didn't filter out hot/cold break material)
- filter bag (worked OK but ended up using 3 of them to catch everything, plus can't do that if draining into a carboy)
- whirlpooling and running the dip tube all the way to the side of the BK for takeoff (didn't really work, still picked up a ton of stuff)
- whirlpooling then using a racking cane (worked well but left ~2gal of beer behind on a 10gal batch)
tl;dr - How are you guys handling getting clean wort out of the BK without leaving a ton behind?
My boil kettle is driving me nuts, I can't get a good way to get a clean runout to the primary without leaving (what seems like to me anyway) to be an excessive volume behind to capture the trub. My boil kettle is a 1/2bbl keg with a weldless fitting ball valve and a dip tube. I've tried:
- using a false bottom plate (clogged up with hop debris and didn't filter out hot/cold break material)
- filter bag (worked OK but ended up using 3 of them to catch everything, plus can't do that if draining into a carboy)
- whirlpooling and running the dip tube all the way to the side of the BK for takeoff (didn't really work, still picked up a ton of stuff)
- whirlpooling then using a racking cane (worked well but left ~2gal of beer behind on a 10gal batch)
tl;dr - How are you guys handling getting clean wort out of the BK without leaving a ton behind?