Hey guys, a buddy and I have done our first two batches this week. We've received conflicting information on whether or not to strain the wort when transferring into the carboy. On one hand, our pumpkin spice porter resulted in A TON of excess spice getting caught up in the filter and not making it into the fermenter, when we've heard that this kit can have a little too much spice in it. Today, we brewed an English brown ale, and while there was significantly less sediment, we let it go in the fermenter. The instructions in the Brewer's Best kits (yeah...kits. Let us get our feet wet before we get too involved) say nothing about straining, just making sure that "large sediment" doesn't go in. An employee at the local homebrew store told me today that we shouldn't have strained because it would have an effect on the flavor. Is there an accepted practice here, or is it really a matter of preference? Some insight would be awesome. Thanks a lot gentleman, and I hope I can keep getting advice.
I have striained my first two batches with pretty good sucsses. I take a sanitized mesh hop bag,stick my auto siphon in it, tie it off I then stick it into my boil kettle and away I go. You still get a fair amount of sediment in the bottom of your fermenter but not nearly as much as you would have by just pouring your kettle in the your fermentation vessel. ju
In his book, "How to Brew", John Palmer says the beer sitting on the trub can pick up off flavors. The section I'm referring to is mainly in reference to the beer conditioning phase. This is why Brewer's Best recommends transferring to a secondary fermenter.
I've done a Brewer's Best IPA and Brewer's Best Scottish Ale with no filtering but using a secondary fermenter. Both turned out pretty damn good. My third batch is a Brewer's Best APA. I racked it from the brew pot into my primary fermenter similar to what Ejayz said and I got a lot less trub in my fermenter. That was last weekend so I don't have any results to report yet.
You should strain. We all do in some form, whether it is by actual strainer w/ cheesecloth, whirlpool method, false bottom, or otherwise. If you are chilling quickly enough (with or without fining agents) you can get cold break and hop particles out of the wort prefermentation. This does several things. Just a few are help create clearer beer, avoiding the grass flavor from hops being in the fermenter too long, and minimizing the trub that settles out that can lend itself to off flavors. Straining is not the best way to go if you can chill the wort relativly quickly, whirlpool, then carefully rack to fermenter. Even better than that is whirlpooling using a brew pot with a valve, no need to siphon that way.
I don't strain from boil to bucket, either, but do strain and make an effort to leave all of the sediment behind when racking to secondary. I am still pretty new at this, but my very first beer (golden ale) clarified very nicely in secondary. I have enjoyed about half of it at this point, and even the very first one I tried poured very clear into the glass.
I had always used the whirlpool, but after my first batch i added a mesh strainer for aeration purposes. Basically rather than just pour from a height and let it splash, just pour from a height through a fine mesh strainer and into the fermenter and your left with a foam that the vessel can barely contain. This method only works with a bucket however, which i guess I am assuming you are using.
Berfore the "crash" I posted a similar question a few months ago. One suggestion that I received which yielded great results: Line your bucket with a sanitized (boiled) nylon painters-bag. Pour the contents of the kettle into the bucket and pull out the bag. I get very little trub in my fermenter using this method.
How easy was it to get out, and how long did it take? I'd have infection concerns depending on the time required...
The actual pour was fine....it just kept clogging the filter requiring a rinse and sanitize after about every five minutes. The brown ale took maybe....10 minutes to pour the whole wort in the pumpkin porter was about 25 I'd say.
May be worth a listen: "February 23, 2012 - Trub Experiment Results James and Chris Colby, editor of Brew Your Own magazine, go over the results of the BYO-BBR Collaborative Experiment on kettle trub in the fermenter." http://traffic.libsyn.com/basicbrewing/bbr02-23-12trubres.mp3 (you can FFWD to about minute 16)
I recently transferred over a pumpkin ale into my secondary and it has quite a lot of sediment/sludge on the bottom, almost a good five to six inch deep pocket of it. Normally, I would have filtered it from the boil kettle to the primary, but a brain fart hit me like a ton of bricks. The up side is that it began fermenting very actively again after I did it, but now along with the sediment, I have a thick layer of foam on the top. Should I attempt to rack again into another carboy or leave as is and let nature take it's course?
Use Irish moss, 1 teaspoon, put it in for the last 15 minutes of the boil. It will help give you a cleaner beer. It's cheap and it's worth it. Use a yeast activator during the last 10 minutes of the boil. This helps get the ferment get going quickly and it gives a very strong ferment for 24-48 hours depending on your yeast/temps of ferment. The better your ferment goes - the more 'stuff' that settles will get trapped in the yeast at the bottom of your first stage ferment bucket. Some people say not to strain going into 2nd stage due to oxygen production from the wort splashing into the 2nd carboy. It hasn't happened to me and it does make the beer cleaner. Just sanitize, boil your nylon or cheesecloth before and after use, then hang dry to avoid mold. Switch to leaf hops, much cleaner and I think the flavor is better. Hopefully this helps. Your flavors have transferred during the boil unless you're dry hopping the wort, so don't worry about straining out the spices.
I think it's a 2-person job when I pour my wort into the carboy primary. I have a large funnel with a strainer that fits it exactly. While I pour my wife will hold the funnel steady as well as use my brewing spoon to move the trub to one side to clear the screen and allow the wort to flow thru. Yes, some trub gets thru the fine strainer, but it's not so much. Beside the possibility of picking up off flavors from a lot of trub, it's impossible to know what volume the trub takes up in space, thus you can't know whether you have 5 gallons or 4.5 or whatever in case you need to add water to get to the level required by your recipe. Also, your strainer is already sanitized, so if you choose to dump the trub from the strainer after pouring part of the wort thru it, you don't need to sanitize again.
I say leave it as is, and when you're ready to package the beer you'll have to siphon with your siphon intake at a higher level in the carboy to leave the trub behind as best as you can.
