What Is The Best Way To Filter Wort

[PakDat]

What is the best way to filter your freshly made wort?

I recently made my second batch of extracted beer from a kit that I bought. The kit came with hop pellets and since it was an IPA, there was lots of it. I did buy a double strainer for this batch of goodiness and I used it. It works well and I like using it. But it gets clogged really quickly and no wort goes through the strainer. Any thoughts or ideas of filtering with a hefty amount of hop pellets would be helpful.

Or would it be best to just let it ferment in the fermenter and let all the sediments float into the bottom?

 

[BigFloyd]

You can make a hop spider that uses the one gallon paint strainer bags they have at Lowes. I like mine.

 

[brick]

You don't really need a strainer. Right after chilling the wort, use a sanitized spoon to stir the pot and get a good whirlpool going. That will bring the hops to the center of the pot. After the wort settles you can siphon cleanly from the edge of the pot and a hop pile will be left in the middle. I don't worry about break material, personally, but you can rack off of that too by letting the wort sit longer (20-30 minutes) after the whirlpool and siphoning from above the trub. (You will want to use a fining agent like Whirlfloc to get the best break.)

 

[julioardz]

I have never strained my wort. Sometimes I do try to keep the spent hops out of the fermenting wort, so I use a muslin bag clipped to the side of the kettle. Each addition of hops goes into the bag. I steep it and move it around a bit to break up the hop pellets, then clip it back to the side of the kettle.

 

[Yooper]

I don't strain my wort usually- but if I wanted to because of a ton of debris, I'd use a sanitized "paint strainer" bag that you can get at home depot and Ace. You line your fermenter bucket with the paint strainer, pour the wort in, and then lift out the paint strainer. Do it near the sink so you don't drip all over the place. For a carboy, I guess a hand held strainer and funnel is the only option.

I use a hops spider for pellet hops in my boil kettle if I have a ton of them. If I don't have a ton, I just let them settle out in the fermenter.

 

[ilikeguns]

I used two paint strainer bags, first one was for my hops during the boil, second was sanitized and was used to catch everything left as it went into the bucket. Cleanup and transfer was so much easier. I will have to see if hop utilization suffered although i don't have a baseline of a similar recipe.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[PakDat]

I wonder if removing all those hops from the wort before placing it into the bucket will matter in the flavor and taste. Does anyone know?

 

[julioardz]

The beer has turned out good both when I left the hops in the fermenter and when I removed them by using a muslin bag. I haven't done a side by side comparison with the same recipe though. I do it mostly for less matter in the trub. I do notice the trub doesn't smell as bad when the hops are removed.

 

[Newsman]

I always put my pellet hops in one of the muslin hop bags and tie the top off and just let it float around the boiling wort on it's own. Then, when I'm done with the hops, I just lift the muslin bag out and toss it, hops and all.