Scooping out the hot break

[HumboldtBrewer]

So I used to be an assistant brewer at a nano brewery, and the owner/head brewer used to scoop out the hot break material with a strainer. I never got a solid answer from him besides that it helps with clarity of the beer. As I dive further into the inner workings of hot break material and other effects on the finished beer is that, it may cause a harsher bitterness to your bittering hops due to the proteins attaching themselves to certain compounds within the hops.

Are there actually a need to scoop out the hot break material out of your boil kettle? I am also not that convinced about the hops and hot break hypothesis as well. I am sure it may show effects during a controlled study and maybe on a large scale, but does it come into play on a homebrew scale?


Tap 1: Weizenbock
Tap 2: Empty
Tap 3: Empty
Tap 4: Empty
Primary: Empty
Secondary: Sour Strawberry Saison

 

[chawn]

There's an interesting experiment done by @brulosopher that helped me decide.

http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/

 

[snow16]

That same article helped me decide a while back.

I never really worried about trub too much, but I worry about it even less now...

 

[vwmasstransit]

WOW! That was an interesting article for sure!

 

[Natdavis777]

I read that article a year ago as well. Kind of concurred with it. I was always hit or miss scooping out hot break or transferring trub. What I really found out that impacted my flavor was fermentation temp and water treatment.

Matter of fact I am enjoying an IPA I recently brewed that had a decent amount of trub make it into the first Carboy but not the second. Both kegs taste the same.