Something that I never see adequately talked about online, in forums or on podcasts is how is everybody drawing their wort out of their kettles.
I see a lot of talk about immersion chillers vs. plate chillers. Or about how much or how little kettle trub you should have in your fermentor. But whenever, someone declares what side of these fences they stand on, they never actually tell us what’s going on in their kettle to make it happen.
Well in this video I try and lay it out there as to what your kettle options are.
I think about this one quite a bit from time to time. And I waver on what’s the best hardware setup in the kettle to get what I want. Maybe I just can’t be satisfied.
I currently draw wort out of my kettle using a dip tube that collects from the edge of the kettle. I accept a some degree of hop dregs and break material, while sacrificing some volume of wort in the batch (rectified by slightly larger batch amounts in the recipe).
Many people talk about whirlpooling to generate a nice cone of hop and break in the center of the pot. That way you are collecting clear beer from the edge. I am sorry but I have never been able to get a neat cone of junk in my kettle. I am certain its because of the bulkhead and the dip tube creating turbulence in the kettle as the wort spins around. So unless you use a plain pot with no internal hardware, and you use a racking cane and tubing to siphon out the wort… I believe you can forget the dream of some pretty cone in the middle of the kettle.
That said. Someday I’d really like to upgrade to a plate chiller. But I am terrified of the thing either A) Clogging on my mid-transfer or B) Harboring to much debris that it becomes impossible to adequately clean and it leads to the occasional contaminated batch.
So from there I’ll leave it to you dear reader. Watch the video. Then let us know where you stand. Do you siphon, or do you use brew kettle dip tubes? Do you suck it all up and out to get every last drop of wort? OR do you sacrifice some volume for clearer wort? How do you get clear wort? Suck from the side or do you use a screen or filter of some sort?
Let us know your thoughts.
BREW ON!
Chris golden
I’ve been toying with the idea of building a 3 tier gravity brew sculpture which would require me to engineer an apparatus similar to yours. My current situation is 12 gallon pre mash in water volume (approx 7-8g post removing bag, typically 25-28lbs of grain) biab using converted keg (15.5 keggle), batch sparging after initial 1 hour mash by placing grain filled biab bag into 20g cooler (the cube) and adding 3 gallons of 170f water, let it sit for 30mins, then add second runnings (after 10-15min drain back into the cube) back to boil kettle. This has yeilded me in the ballpark of 85% efficiency, consistently. I’m daunted about the idea of attempting to achieve my current results using a traditional mash tun. I’m getting OGs around 1.070-1.080 and FGs using Nottingham and similar of 1.008-1.010. My kegerator has 1 batch at 12.9% and another at 7.4%. My friend gave me a bayou classic flat false bottom (with the legs on it, I will cut off), I’m thinking of crafting it to fit one of my 4 homemade keggles. All that said to say this; you are using keggles, thusly you would have an opinion about using a convex shaped false bottom vs a flat false bottom in a keggle, and I am
Interested in your opinion about which one would yeild a higher end volume, if any. Thanks for the video! And thanks for brewing! (Anioxiously awaiting your response 🙂