whirlfloc problem with Excess Trub Help please

[brenmurph]

Hi Folks, after 2 years of fellas tellin me Im mad not to use Whirlfloc, I did last night on my third winter alt, this time a spices altbier.
Fantastic stuff that whirlfloc how all the stuff settles right dowm....OK Problem is

I have a 30 litre batch with 9 litres of trub what am I to do. I cant dump 9 litres. I removed 3 litres from the conical last night an hour after the boil and blast chill. This was put in a couple of jugs, this mornin the stuff in the jugs has settlet and there is an inch of very clear wort and 6 inches of trub so im presuming it wont settle further. My conical has over 6 ( corrected forgot to deduct the other 3) litres of trub sitting in it thats after I removed 3 already.

any suggestions please?

[Eoin]

How much whirlfloc did you use? For 30l of normal gravity beer you should be using about 0.9g of the stuff. The package suggests much higher dosage rates, the issue with this is excessive trub, the same can happen in the fermenter also. Get a precision scales and measure it next time.

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[brenmurph]

Thanks Eoin, I presumed as they came from homebrew shop in unmarked container that it is one for a homebrew batch, I discovered most people use about a half, this cant explain 10+ litres of trub though?

[Dr Jacoby]

I had massive amounts of trub using whirlfloc in a 30 litre batch of lager recently. I actually brewed a 30 litre batch rather than a standard 20 litre batch because I knew I'd get a lot of cold break using the whirlfloc. I was able to siphon most of the beer out being very careful not to suck up too much of the trub. I'd say I lost about 5 litres.

If you use a smaller dose of whirlfloc the trub (mostly protein) will stay in solution. This shouldn't be any problem, especially for an Alt where the colour will be a little darker and it will be lagered for a few weeks. 

[Eoin]

Thanks Eoin, I presumed as they came from homebrew shop in unmarked container that it is one for a homebrew batch, I discovered most people use about a half, this cant explain 10+ litres of trub though?

There are other factors, but yeah it could explain that much trub.

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[irish_goat]

Was thinking about this the other day. What if you were to siphon off the clear wort and then whack the trub/wort mix into a bucket and put it in the fridge? The chilling would help settle a lot more of the trub and you might get a few more litres out of it. Would it be ok then to add this to the already fermenting primary?

[Eoin]

Was thinking about this the other day. What if you were to siphon off the clear wort and then whack the trub/wort mix into a bucket and put it in the fridge? The chilling would help settle a lot more of the trub and you might get a few more litres out of it. Would it be ok then to add this to the already fermenting primary?

The gelatine content appears to discourage a tight compaction of the excess trub. It gets fluffy and stays very voluminous.

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[irish_goat]

Was thinking about this the other day. What if you were to siphon off the clear wort and then whack the trub/wort mix into a bucket and put it in the fridge? The chilling would help settle a lot more of the trub and you might get a few more litres out of it. Would it be ok then to add this to the already fermenting primary?

The gelatine content appears to discourage a tight compaction of the excess trub. It gets fluffy and stays very voluminous.

Hmm. Just me having thoughts here but what if I was to use a french press on it?

[Eoin]

I suspect that when put under pressure it'll either block the filter, or go straight through it. My voile hop bags manage to pretty much block up with trub when I'm boiling.
Best advice is 30mg per litre of normal gravity beer, up to about 50mg for stronger gravities. Source is Graham Wheeler.

Edited to fix incorrect values.

[irish_goat]

Ok cheers for that. I'll see what I end up with on the next brewday and maybe give it a go.

Would there be an issue with adding more wort to the fermenter the next day?

[Eoin]

No issues with adding wort later.

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[JD]

I'm just going to throw this out there and see what the collective ingenuity can come up with: you could try centrifuging the 9 litres.

Do be careful of buckets flying off bucket handles though
/J

[Eoin]

It would work.... But you'd need a Saddam sized centrifuge....

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[brenmurph]

thanks for all above comments, im still wondering if in general ye homebrewers that use whirlfloc lose circa 5-10 litres to trub?
Im using a conical and after 12 hours now the trub is still 4 litres having already lost 3 litres, at this rate Im losing 30% of my produce, there must be a simple explanation as to how a half a gram of whirlfloc produces 10 litres of denaturised egg white, barley grain does NOT contain that much protein. My nutrition database shows the solid content ( excluding the 10% or less water) of protein is somewhere around 12-15%.
So lets say whirlfloc helps to remove ALL protein in the wort, there is still a loss of 5 litres of beer in my case.
Is thgat the cost of using Whirlfloc? if it is I will not use it again, I can produce clear beers by letting beer mature in cool and my normal post-boil trub for 30 litre batch is about 2 litres tops.

[Eoin]

My observation is that the protein flocs around the pieces of agar/seaweed this results in small clouds of trub around the granules, this makes them greater than the sum of their parts and very fluffy, this sponginess takes more wort than is logical due to its spongey nature. Dose it correctly and you won't have this issue, I've already been through this cos I thought more is better, until I had a conversation with Graham Wheeler on jims a few years back. It needs to be high enough to work, but not too high that it creates a fluffy precipitate.

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