Ok, so the other night while making the Homebrew Company's Hobble Wobble all grain mashkit I made the mistake of not boiling the hops inside the bag which led to a clogged tap when transferring the wort to the FV. Slightly panicked, I dumped the whole lot into the FV. Now it is fermenting away quite nicely, but there is a load of grain trub in the bottom (which I'm sure did affect my OG reading). So I have two questions at the moment -
1) Will the presence of this grain trub affect either the fermentation or the flavour of the finished beer?
2) What is the best way to remove the trub? It is too high in the FV to be able to use the tap, and as there are still bits of hop leaf in there I don't think I can use a syphon. I was thinking about dumping it into another FV, but through the sanitised bag this time, would this be advisable?
All advice appreciated!
Ian
1) Trub shouldn't make a huge difference. Cold crash the beer before you bottle/keg and you'll be fine. All the stuff you dont want in your beer should settle out. Read this exbeeriment comparing trub to no trub in the FV http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/
2) Do not transfer through a bag now. You will oxidise your beer and that would be worst. If you have a syphon tie a hop bag over the end that goes into the beer when you're transferring. This should stop the hops and trub coming through into your bottles/keg. Most of all just be careful transferring too, don't push down into the layer at the bottom, if it has settled once fermentation is finished it should form a nice compact cake. I assume that Hobble Cobble uses S-04 for the yeast? If so thats good because it will form an even solider yeast cake than American yeast strains, especially US-05.
I find after chilling if you try to drain the fermenter straight away you'll get a clogged tap but if you give it a good few stirs to create a whirlpool (with a sanitised spoon) and then leave it to settle for 20-30 minutes you should be able to use the tap without any clogging.
The worst thing about it is that this is my 2nd go and I actually got that part right the first time! Won't be making that mistake again anyway... :-[
Thanks for the advice everyone.
I reckon I will let it all ferment out and then cold crash before syphoning it out with the hop bag tied over the end, like Qs has suggested. It was actually US-05 yeast with the kit, but hopefully it will work out alright.
Thanks again,
Ian
05 wont make that much of a difference, give it a good 3-5 days of a cold crash though and be careful not to rouse the cake.
Ok, I'll let you know how it turns out. My greatest fear is that in my blind panic I was not as attentive to matters of sanitation as I should have been, so we'll see!
My first BIAB brew days were a huge panic also.
my first BIAB, the element stopped working because I hadn't modified the heat cut out so I ended up with a 45 min boil... it was grand in the end. Well, i drank most of the beer, though it was different.
On the scale of mistakes that's not a big one :) It'll be fine. Hop bags are a good idea, if you ever need to dump from the kettle again though a sanitised sieve can be a good idea.
So I bottled this brew around two weeks ago after cold crashing for a week. Despite the crash and syphoning through muslin, the bottles ended up with quite a lot of sediment as you can see here. It is still a very tasty beer once care is taken pouring it!
(http://s24.postimg.org/48j79aks1/rsz_sediment.jpg)
Looks normal to me ;)