Stainless Hop Spider and Cold Break

[HungusBrews]

Not sure if this will actually help anyone but I observed an interesting phenomenon on my last brew session that I wanted to share. I was brewing a big IPA and using hop extract for bittering. Since it was not needed, I kept my stainless hop spider out of the wort until a few min left in the boil. I dropped the spider in and for whatever reason I decided to pull it out and see how much of the extract resin stuck to it.

Well it turned out that resin wasn't my problem. So much cold break formed and stuck to the sides that it held the wort inside as I tried to pull it out! I ended up having to scrub the break material off and then running the spider under hot water before putting it back in the kettle. I even held it in the steam blowing off to heat even more. When I dropped the spider back in warm I did not have the same problem.

Moral of the story...Start the boil with you stainless spiders in the wort. If I hadn't noticed this my IPA would have been pretty boring indeed.

 

[JasontheBeaver]

Just stumbled across this thread. Very interesting! I'm surprised no one else has chimed in about their experiences.
I am thinking about buying a stainless spider and a corny dry hop spider from Utah Filter soon.