Brew Day Blues

[Western Brewer]

Hi all
Doing my partial mash brew today. All was going well until cooling when I realised my hop strainer had come off in the boiler Could not get it to run continously so gave up and poured the wort out of the boiler through a sieve into the fermentation bucket. Glad I only did 2 1/2 gallons. Fermentation bin now in a bath of cold water to try to get the temperature down. There must be a better way of fixing the strainer to the boiler rather than just a bit of silicon? pipe. Anyone got a solution/idea.
Feeling a bit p***ed off at the moment as the brew is taking longer than I had hoped.

Regards WB

[DRB]

Sorry to here you are having some grief with your filter in the boiler , i'm no expert but if you go to brewing equipment and scrol down to boiler filter, I've got a picture of my filter there ,and there are a few other examples.

[Vossy1]

Why not place a bit of 15mm copper tube to the outlet and connect this to your hop strainer with a 15mm compression fitting.

You can unscrew this to dismantle for cleaning.

Can we have a piccy oy your attachment for the hop strainer?

EDIT

Just like DRB's....gr8 minds think alike

[Jim]

The braided pvc hose came with the strainer. I cut one piece of syphon tubing that was a tight fit over it then added another piece cut down it's length to wrap around then bunged it in the tap.

A bit Heath Robinson, but it's never come off in the boil yet, touch wood.

[PieOPah]

My last brew had the Hop Strainer fall off and I only discovered this when I wasn't getting much wort coming out of the tap but seeing about 7 litres in my boiler.

I ended up throwing away the lost wort and looking at why I had a problem.

Basically, because the PVC tubing softens in the boil, I needed to secure it to the strainer (the tubing stays in the tap with no problem, just the strainer falls off the tubing). I have stuck a jubilee clip onto the tube and tightend it as much as possible. I haven't been able to pull the tube off so I am confident that it won't fall off again.

I haven't yet tried this (going to be a couple of weeks before I get to brew again) but I'm not worried

[NzDan1]

Ive never used the copper pipes withs holes in but im going to one of these days,
Ive had been using stainless steel pot scrubbers hose clipped onto the inside of my tap, it dosent always work though, they still seem to get clogged sometimes,
Now i just hose clip a scrubber to one end of some hose, fill the hose with water, block off the end, place the scrubber in the boiler, release finger on the other end into a jug on the floor until the wort comes through, reblock the hose then place it in my fermentor and release, keep scrubber just under the top of the wort until you reach the bottom.
This gets the wort in the fermentor way faster than the tap and I can get more wort out of the boiler, if you place the hose into the middle of the scrubber you can stay off the trub.

Sterilise your hands, arms, hose and scrubber first!

[NzDan1]

What a PITA

Here's my method for securing a hop filter to my Electrim boiler tap



I've simply opened the back of the tap out to 15mm to take the copper tube, its a snug push fit.

To fit a hop strainer to a WD type boiler tap from Jims pics it looks like he uses a small piece of braided pvc to take up the difference in diameter between the copper in the back of the tap.

How far off the bottom are the strainers?
Do they ever get blocked?

[Jim]

Mine rests on the bottom of the boiler, and it hasn't ever blocked.

[NzDan1]

That sounds very efficient, is it copper tube with 1mm holes in it?
I would have thought especially when using hop pellets only and irish moss that it would get clogged easily at that depth.

[PieOPah]

As a general rule in the UK we don't use hop pellets. Mainly have whole hops.

I have only ever used pellets when they were suplied in a coupl of kits and even then it was used only in primary so no filters to cause problems with.

[NzDan1]

I see, I can only usually get a couple of varietys of whole hops and most recipes I have use pellets as well as whole hops or pellets alone.

[Frothy]

Bad luck WestyB.
I did my first brew without a hop bag or strainer & got into all kinds of hell blocking up my pipes & cfc. Ended up actually tipping the boiling hot wort from the boiler through a seive into the fermentor - messy as... I've used hop bags ever since.

Matt

[NzDan1]

I spent a couple of hours making a nice mesh tube only to realise that my immersion chiller was going to hit it, so that was out of the question, then went to pot scrubbers which works sometimes, the immersion chiller fits in but the scrubber stops flow sometimes with whole hops and with pellets, im thinking if I built one of those copper tubes which bends sideways around the boiler at tap level I will avoid the immersion chiller and stay out of the nasty trub the pellets leave at the bottom.

[Western Brewer]

Can we have a piccy oy your attachment for the hop strainer?

EDIT

Hi Vossy1
As requested a picture of the fitting. I bought a Electrim boiler and a hop strainer to fit but didn't like the tap on the boiler as it had a tapered outlet, so I got a Drum Tap from hop & grape/ Of course the strainer needed to be modified so I slipped an extra piece of tubing over the end which made it a nice push fit into the back of the new tap. Today it seperated at the piece of tubing that conects the two 90 degree bends. may solder a short piece of copper pipe between then instead.http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g270/ ... rainer.jpg

[Western Brewer]

Well pleased in the end. OG should of been 1090. I got 1091, so chuffed with that. With all the messing about the wort had I hope it comes out ok.