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Bottom for Brew Kettle

condog

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I have a keg, that I made into a brew kettle, with ball valve and sight glass. I am wondering what would work best for help in filtering hops at end of boil? False bottom or bazooka screen ? I recently added whole hops at end of boil , first time I used whole hops. That created clogging of the ball valve when I tried to drain.
 
Better?  Dunno...I think they are about equal for whole hops (one is cheaper though).  Actually they are both equally INeffective for pellet hops, too.  :)

I have a bazooka screen over a dip-tube.  I use whole hops.  Works fine. 
 
I give the chilled wort 20 - 30 minutes to settle before draining the kettle and use a stainless steel scrubbing pad held against the inside of the valve with a slotted copper tubing gadget that wedges into the bottom of the kettle. It's sufficient to keep whole hops in the kettle. If I use pellets (rarely) I put them in a bag. As the hops pile up against the scrubber the runoff gets clearer. The runoff also goes into a sanitized, fine-mesh bag on the way to the fermenter.

The double-filtering gives reasonably clear wort and adds a bit of aeration. I know crystal-clear wort seems like a good idea, but whatever crud gets through the double filter seems to drop out during fermentation and cold crashing.

I'm a pretty casual brewer and am generally willing to believe that the easy way is adequate until proven otherwise; does anyone have experience to indicate that a little cloudiness in the wort is harmful to the finished beer?

Dan
 
If it taste good it is GOOD! I don't blame the haziness of the beer but, the haziness of your eyes.

Ever since I started kegging I've  colded crashed the beer for 2-3 days after fermentation. I've been getting great clarity. (I use hop pellets.)
 
I have a side dip tube and use that in conjunction with whirlpooling for 10 minutes.

Mark
 
I use a dip tube with a cap at the end.  Then I drilled small holes in the cap so that the openings are larger than a screen but too small for whole hops to pass through.  I use the cotton bag that Seven Bridges sells when I use pellets, but put the whole hops in loose.

It sounds a little Rube Goldberg, but it works.
 
I'm struggling with the same issue; too much nasty trub is passing from my kettle into my fermenter!

For my last brew, I bunched-up one end of a stainless steel scrubby and stuffed it into the exit hole on the inside of my kettle - seemed to work a little better but I also tipped the kettle back about 10 degrees and let it rest about 20 minutes after chilling the wort so the nastiness wouldn't build-up at the exit hole.

I'm looking at a new pot - the Boilermaker with the optional Hop-Blocker in hopes it will help with getting clean wort into the fermenter.

Anyone have any input on this?
 
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