Slow run off from boiler, is that a problem?

[Brownster]

Hi all,
I've just finished my third AG brew yesterday, a Timothy Taylor Landlord recipe from the Chris Wheeler / Roger Protz book.
The recipe called for a 2 hour boil and irish moss at 15 minutes which I did.
Everything went very well until I started to run off the cooled wort into the F.V., it started slow and then got slower but didn't actually stop, I didn't know what to do so I shut the tap and tried moving some of the trub away from the hop filter before resuming but that didn't help, as the volume went down I could see the trub was loose and quite thick so I just carried on letting it run (I thought about syphoning off but seeing how high the loose trub was I thought I'd lose to much) all in all it took about an hour maybe slightly more. Is having a slow run off a problem, ie likely to cause infection? Is this common?
Thanks.

[Brownster]

Is there a new book out then ?

Oops I meant Graham Wheeler! My memory is fading already....

If you've got a lot of break material in the boiler this may well be responsible for the sow run off. It's not ideal to leave the wort exposed to the air for a long period but odds are you wont experience any problems as long as you pitch a good yeast that gets going reasonably quickly.

I did create a starter bottle which was fermenting well when I pitched so hopefully it'll be ok then.
Any tips on improving the flow? I could re-design the hop filter I suppose, try and increase the length of tubing and the number of holes.

[Brownster]

Holes seem to work best in hop strainers, you can nenver have too many.

lol, I shall get to work on hop strainer mkII, I shall call it ementile the swiss cheese of hop strainers.

[booldawg]

Just out of interest; did you start running of from boiler to FV as soon as pitching temp had been reached? I used to have a fair bit of trouble with slow run-offs, to the point of having to agitate the wort with a sanitised paddle around the hop strainer to get it to run off.

Since leaving the wort for 30 minutes to settle when pitching temp has been reached I find that I get decent run-offs and loads more break material held back.

[Brownster]

Just out of interest; did you start running of from boiler to FV as soon as pitching temp had been reached? I used to have a fair bit of trouble with slow run-offs, to the point of having to agitate the wort with a sanitised paddle around the hop strainer to get it to run off.

Since leaving the wort for 30 minutes to settle when pitching temp has been reached I find that I get decent run-offs and loads more break material held back.

Hi, Yes I did, as soon as I got to about 20c I opened the tap and immediately noticed I had a slow run-off.
My hop strainer is a simple affair I made from copper tube, it has an elbow to crank it so it lays on the bottom of the boiler, overall length is about 120mm, drilled on 4 sides with about 2mm holes at 10mm intervals approximately so it's not that big. However the design is similar to my brothers and he has yet to have a problem with run-off.
I guess if on the next brew, I try a run-off, if I have the same problem perhaps leaving it for 30 minutes at that point won't help, what do you think?