Trub: leave or rack?

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JohnRB
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Trub: leave or rack?

Post by JohnRB » Sun Apr 23, 2017 9:34 am

My BIAB kettle has no tap so I either pour or jug the wort into the fermenter. Even with a strainer, a lot of trub gets carried over. Question is, once the trub has settled out should I rack to a secondary and risk infection or leave well alone?

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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by Haydnexport » Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:07 am

could you not siphon the wort out ?

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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by JohnRB » Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:09 am

Haydnexport wrote:could you not siphon the wort out ?
Now that's a thought! But for yesterday's brew?

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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by Haydnexport » Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:16 am

my first couple of attempts when i started a couple years ? ago was full of trub hop debris etc, while they didnt turn out to be the clearest of beer they were not spoilt by it, id personally leave it.

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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by shepp » Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:22 am


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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by JohnRB » Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:30 am

Great. Thanks, shepp and Haydnexport! I'll leave this one on the trub and be ultra careful when siphoning to the bottling bucket. Next brew I'll siphon into the fermenter.

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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by k1100t » Sun Apr 23, 2017 1:27 pm

I like beer --- Currently rebuilding the brewery, this time with stainless...

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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by Fil » Sun Apr 23, 2017 1:51 pm

JohnRB wrote:My BIAB kettle has no tap so I either pour or jug the wort into the fermenter. Even with a strainer, a lot of trub gets carried over. Question is, once the trub has settled out should I rack to a secondary and risk infection or leave well alone?
When contemplating the set up of a bigger brewkit and working out how it would all work together i was asking similar questions. As i finalised on a design/process using a Hop Spider and no Hop filtering prior to CFC chilling between the kettle and FV, i would/Do end up with the majority of the brews break material as trub in the fv.

MOre accomplished brewers than i were helpful and responded that break material can provide beneficial building blocks for the yeast population growth. SO I relaxed and have simply let the trub settle out and simply racked off for keg/bottling post primary as per usual.

tho i would consider adding a tap to your pot pdq it will make the end of the boil a lot easier ..
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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by Kev888 » Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:53 pm

IMO for best practice you should not have hot break in the FV, and ideally should remove any cold break shortly after it settles out. Prior to conical fermenters, the dropping system was devised (which is not dissimilar to racking) partly to aerate and partly to separate from the break, some other systems used settling tanks.

But... it won't make very noticeable difference to most/typical home-brewed beers and storage regimes, if it is mainly cold break. So many people consider cold break not worth worrying much about, unless they have a conical FV (because this makes it easy to dump). Hot break is somewhat more undesirable, but whether you notice any effects of it only you can tell.

That brulosophy site always gets brought up on these occasions. Generally speaking, the results of their exbeeriments (purposely not called experiments) are interesting, BUT shouldn't be assumed to mean much outside the exact beer and circumstances tested. The results reported are also usually limited to perception in the short term - stability of the beer over time, for instance, tends to be ignored. EDIT: So IMO best to make your own mind up, especially if you deviate substantially from the methods or circumstances in their test.
Last edited by Kev888 on Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by orlando » Mon Apr 24, 2017 7:20 am

Fil wrote:
tho i would consider adding a tap to your pot pdq it will make the end of the boil a lot easier ..
Agreed.

Although there doesn't appear to be a definitive answer to this my gut instinct is to leave behind as much trub as possible but a little cold break is less of an issue. I suspect that trub doesn't help with clarity and may have an influence on beer stability over time, as Kev suggests.
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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by Eric » Mon Apr 24, 2017 11:58 am

orlando wrote:
Fil wrote:
tho i would consider adding a tap to your pot pdq it will make the end of the boil a lot easier ..
Agreed.

Although there doesn't appear to be a definitive answer to this my gut instinct is to leave behind as much trub as possible but a little cold break is less of an issue. I suspect that trub doesn't help with clarity and may have an influence on beer stability over time, as Kev suggests.
I think there is a definitive answer and your gut feeling is right, the problems are those arguments against which invariably look at only one aspect and ignor all others. Heavier alien particles will deposit and maybe even several parts per million of them might have some beneficial influence, but that doesn't mean we can safely overlook large amounts of marterials that are not food for brewing yeast but are for organisms that cause what we call infection.
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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by Sadfield » Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:44 pm

Kev888 wrote:That brulosophy site always gets brought up on these occasions. Generally speaking, the results of their exbeeriments (not experiments) are interesting, but shouldn't be assumed to mean much outside the exact circumstances tested. And the tests are also usually limited to perception in the short term - stability of the beer over time, for instance, tends to be ignored. In this case it probably isn't too far off the mark for most homebrewers, though if you deviate substantially from the methods or circumstances in their test, then best to make your own mind up.
Agreed, but I would also say the same about conventional brewing wisdom which is mainly based on historic commercial production techniques, at different scales, using different equipment and most importantly the driven by generation of profit. The whole trub removal issue could merely be based on maximising fermenter capacity. Or, not fouling pumps and inline cooling equipment that are used to manage large volumes of wort.

For those reasons, as the Brulosopher is operating at a homebrew scale I'd argue that his experiments are equally, if not more, relevant and readily transferable to our own practices. I respect the point Eric makes about knowing what is right, but a little experimentation is easily achievable within our own setups.







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Kev888
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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by Kev888 » Mon Apr 24, 2017 1:00 pm

Yes there is a lot of unsubstantiated rubbish about, or that has been 'assumed' without verification to translate from commercial scales and practices to home-brewing. In some cases what commercial operations do is down to economic, turnover or distribution and sales reasons too, which many of us don't have and may even be counter-productive to quality.

On the issue of break in the fermenter though, whilst cold break can initially contribute sterols, there is scientific evidence that break also essentially gunks up the yeast cell walls and inhibits the transfer through these - which of course is important to their function. Obviously there are a lot of them, and the outward results aren't often dramatic wrt the beer so it tends to divide opinion in homebrewers, but it is (without much question IMO) a step away from best practice to leave break in the fermenter (especially hot break) if that is one's priority.
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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by Sadfield » Mon Apr 24, 2017 1:37 pm

Valid point regarding hot and cold break. In the OPs case however, I feel getting the wort cleany into the fv, outways any pros and cons regarding break material.

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Re: Trub: leave or rack?

Post by orlando » Mon Apr 24, 2017 1:43 pm

I think part of the problem is understanding definitions. Trub, cold break, hot break, are too often used interchangeably, so too often disagreement is more about how the terms are being used than what they actually mean. Finding definitive articles is also compounded by different breweries in different countries making different beers with different equipment experiencing different results so differing in their opinions. (Phew) The only article I have found so far that at least cites some attempts to study the subject can be found here.
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Fermenting:
Conditioning:
Drinking: Southwold Again,

Up Next: John Barleycorn (Barley Wine)
Planning: Winter drinking Beer

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