New pellet hop filter review - Lautehex

[tuffty22]

Used this for the second time yesterday (first time I twisted the spring whilst whirl pooling and made a right mess of things)

Anyway it worked a treat and filtered pellets really well. The flow slowed a little towards the end but nothing drastic.

Would recommend this as a filter to anyone, my wort was as clear as it ever has been running into the FV.

[phatboytall]

Review part II

So I finally got round to brewing again (for the 2nd time) with my lautehex.

Changes?
I've replaced the isolater with a straight connector valve, though this might be slowing it or causing an airlock.
No stirring this time, we let the wort sit for 30mins whilst it cooled to give the everything a chance to settle (last time we stirred continuously for 30mins)

90lt of 1070 wort with 350g of pellet hops in.

The below are the photos of the new connection and the test run with water. All worked fine, a good strong stream coming out.

[phatboytall]

Here is what happened when we brewed.

After 2minutes the outflow very quickly slowed to a very very slow trickle (it actually got worse than the first photo). We had to resort to a syhpon tube to extract the wort, you can see how well this is flowing with the same height.

At the end the problem was clear to see, the lautehex was completely clogged up, the pellet hop debris was preventing anything from getting through.

[phatboytall]

Conclusion

I really really really want this product to work, it looks good, it seems like it should work, but as you can see above it simply doesn't in my experiance. If anyone knows of anything i'm doing wrong please let me know.

I'm conscious Rob has been kind enough to do a test demonstration to show it working for him, however in my experiences above it has been nothing short of a disaster both times! I have tried constant stirring and letting it settled, both equally as ineffective.

Sadly I think i'm going to have to send it back as it simply doesnt do what it is supposed to. Maybe its not designed for this amount of lts/hops?

[john luc]

Thanks for the honest review here . Like so many Homebrewers you are a journey of discovery and as I have travelled that path I came to the conclusion that when planning a boil kettle the best way to to deal with hops is whirlpool. Commercial brewers do not have filters as they would not work. I have built many systems of filter and all eventually failed. From clogging to a bitch to clean.

[Goulders]

I use a hop spider for pellets. No problems. I'm sure I read on a German site that the lautehex was for leaf hops, but I may be imagining it...

[Jocky]

Having had the lauter hex clog very quickly with leaf hops, I thought I would try it just with pellets.

With 80g of pellets in 20 litres of wort the first 5 litres came out ok (and super clear!), but then it slowed down to a trickle. Pulling the spring part up and tipping the boiler to one side I could see that the filter was covered in hop gunk, and could see it sucking more hops onto it.

I think if you have a big enough boiler to create an effective whirlpool, and/or have the patience to let it all settle then this would work really well, as you could get most of the hops settled in the middle.

It probably doesn't suit me though - I try and compress my brew days as much as possible, and so don't have time to wait to let it settle. I also have a smallish (33L) boiler, making it difficult to whirlpool effectively.

I think I'm going to give up filtering my hops in the boiler and instead use hop bags/spider. Or as I'm mostly using pellets these days (easier to get and store) I might possibly put a BIAB type bag in the fermenter which I can run off into, and then I just have to pull the bag up and drain.

[dean_wales]

Conclusion

I really really really want this product to work, it looks good, it seems like it should work

That line is so similar to my view on this gadget that it is slightly eerie!

[UpTheToon]

Conclusion

I really really really want this product to work, it looks good, it seems like it should work

That line is so similar to my view on this gadget that it is slightly eerie!

Yep. I really wanted this to be good so I could ditch my hop bag and use pellets straight in the boil. With a large flamout addition and wanting to put the lid on to lock all that aroma in (so no hop spider) it always feels like you aren't going to be getting high utilisation in a bag.

[dean_wales]

Indeed. Apparently the run off speed is directly proportional to the diameter of the sprint. With a smaller diameter causing the gaps to open wider and speed up flow.

So I suppose changing that (or making a figure of eight, is the only other option.

Dean.

[Jocky]

I need to measure mine, but when I got it I asked the seller to cut it down to 90cm to fit in my pot.

I'll measure it and maybe cut it down before giving it another go, although I am wondering whether I should bother when I have a much simpler solution available.

[phatboytall]

I found siphoning worked so well that i'm kind of lothed to create another "solution"

Using the same low tech approach as out of the fermentors seems good enough to me!

The lautehex is being returned.........

[orlando]

I've been tempted by this idea as I have a central mesh filter and when whirlpooling it inevitably dumps all the trub and hops right on top of it. Compounding this is that I use a pump to whirlpool and this of course sucks trub under the filter and when using pellets to the point that it almost welds them on, have had to almost chip it off the bottom. This has lead me to abandoning using hop pellets and being very careful with my Protafloc additions. What has attracted me to this idea is that after whirlpooling the edges of my pot are virtually clear of any trub and the wort lying there is crystal clear, so if I have one of these tight to the sides it should in theory be draining relatively clear wort most of the time. My worry is that whilst recirculating inevitably some trub is going to be attracted to the flexible filter so I could end up with the same or at least similar problem. The convenience of pellets is a draw and really high hopping additions with leaf has potentially other problems so it is a bit of a dilemma.

[HairyJamie]

I have one of these from the MaltMiller and didn't get on with it at first - even with plain old water it just trickled out.

I now have it in a figure of eight type arrangement and it seems to do the trick. Although I have been using my hop spider as well so I'm not taxing it just in case I have another disaster (and melted syphon ...) !

[Matt in Birdham]

I've been tempted by this idea as I have a central mesh filter and when whirlpooling it inevitably dumps all the trub and hops right on top of it. Compounding this is that I use a pump to whirlpool and this of course sucks trub under the filter and when using pellets to the point that it almost welds them on, have had to almost chip it off the bottom. This has lead me to abandoning using hop pellets and being very careful with my Protafloc additions. What has attracted me to this idea is that after whirlpooling the edges of my pot are virtually clear of any trub and the wort lying there is crystal clear, so if I have one of these tight to the sides it should in theory be draining relatively clear wort most of the time. My worry is that whilst recirculating inevitably some trub is going to be attracted to the flexible filter so I could end up with the same or at least similar problem. The convenience of pellets is a draw and really high hopping additions with leaf has potentially other problems so it is a bit of a dilemma.

Hi Orlando, how do you find whirlpooling with your pump? I think I remember from another thread that you are running the TD5 - I've got one waiting for my brewery rebuild and am toying with the idea of plumbing in the pump for whirlpool. I've never managed a really good one manually - I get somewhat more in the middle than the edges, but that's about it. I drain via a pickup tube at the edge and don't worry too much about trub making it to the fermentor, but it would be nice to generate a proper cone in the middle and pick up even less trub.