Cold Break v Lost Wort

[SlugTrap]

Why do ye use hop bags? I though one of the main benefits of using whole leaf hops is that it acts as a filter bed for your break material.

I don't. Is that true, though - will some break material get caught up in the hops?

Thanks for all the good responses. The consensus seemed to be for squeezing, I may have to get over my dislike for bags.

[brenmurph]

the bags mean you can remove the hops cleanly and this makes far less trub to deal with. A really good rolling boil, blast chill will facilitate good settling of the white gunk ( mainly protein matter) which will settle well if a good rolling boil is done.
Concensus in the best textbooks suggests about hour and a half boil, After 150 mashes in the past year I get better and denser trub ( mainly white protein gunk) settlement.

An important note Ive come across recently is:

get a really good boil going for at least 10 minutes. Im not a chemistry geek, however this has not been discussed on the forum as far as I can see, we need this 10 minute boil before adding hops. What seems to happen is that protein settles / coagulates in the presence of tannin, there is always some tannin from the grain. The tannin and protein connect together and become denarurised just like the white of an egg when u cook it. This is heavy and drops out really easily and you see the very white mass on the bottom of your kettle when it settles.

I prefer hop bags because it prevents clogging of pipes as well as minimising trub. The less lumpy stuff like hop flowers on the bottom the more dense the white stuff is and the easier you can drop it off.

Another key point is that if u add hops in the first 10 minutes of the boil the hop oils and other stuff latches on to the protein and you lose hop flavour, if hops latch on to the protein then tannins cant so you may end up with less flavour and more tannins.

hops this explains and gives some rational for hop bags.

Heres my source and very reputable source it is if you wanna follow it up and read more on this topic. http://bavarianbrewerytech.com/news/boilhops.htm

[Hop Bomb]

I must give that 10 min boil before 1st addition a try. I always skim off the hot break on top before 1st additions. My hops go commando though. I have capacity issues right now with deadspace/gunk v boiler size as Im doing double batches but Im buying a 100 ltr pot from Padraic so Il be able to increase my batch volume a wee bit so I can leave that beer at the bottom of the kettle behind.

[brenmurph]

Scraping gunk off may be a mistake. that frothy gunk is the protein / tannin matrix.. u need it to allow tannin and protein to do their chemistry. I dont know but it seems that modern sources suggest let it dissapear itself and it will drop out at end of boil.  Old books sometimes suggested skimming the froth.

[Eoin]

I skim the froth when I remember to do it. Last time...err port got in the way and I forgot.

I don't really notice a difference and I'm going by the German way of doing it, they say skim all you can, so I try to do this.

[Ciderhead]

Herms will allow you clean hot break


Sent from my Fukushima Daiichi Geiger counter

[brenmurph]

do ye know if all german brewers skim or just some german styles?

[Eoin]

I think all do. Not 100°/. about weizen though.

Sent using a complex system of semaphore and ninjas.