Hop filter

[PeeBee]

I've an enormous hop filter (once described on this forum as "the mother of all hop filters"). Here it is:

It's for a boiler churning out 45-65L batches. But I ran into a problem. I will brew a few 19th century recipes which have big hop quantities of fairly average IBU levels, and my "enormous" hop filter is having difficulty coping. My last brew clogged up severely and I failed to run off the intended batch amount. The remainder was rescued and used for a lower ABV beer.

My "enormous" hop filter needed changing! But bigger diameter SS braid cost a fortune.

But a few weeks ago someone was selling offcuts on eBay and I grabbed at the opportunity:

Getting this fitted is my next project.

[guypettigrew]

One of these might have been a better buy.

Good flow rate, good filtration.

Guy

[PeeBee]

Seen them! There's a little matter of an inconveniently place heating element (all 6KW of it).

I should have said though: This braided SS sleeving is (apparently) no good with hop pellets.

[vacant]

Someone on here suggested a 30p Sainsbury's reusable vegetable bag (nylon mesh) so I used that to keep my hops in place for my last brew, worked a treat.

[PeeBee]

More than two months later, the filter is built and in action:

Not before time: It's first job was for a 45L batch (+20L but same hops, 'cos this was a "parti-gyle" experiment too) of "historic" London Porter. Close on 1/2 kilo of leaf hops (it will block up with pellets, but then pellets will confound any attempt to use a filter). The boiler emptied as if a filter wasn't there. But this did hi-light another issue: These recipe builders (I use Beersmith) just lump boiler losses as (in the case of Beersmith) "loss to trub and chiller", unlikely any have a "hop absorbance" option. So with a mountain of damp hops left in boiler I came up about 2L short. My equipment profile now includes a note to add "0.25L per 50g hops over 150g" to the "loss to trub and chiller" figure.

I didn't need Irish Moss (Protofloc, etc.) for this, nor did I dare: Irish Moss also has a habit of bunging up hop filters.

[PeeBee]

If the geometry of the filter is a bit baffling in the photo above, this is one with the filter in-situ:

It wasn't my intention to include the old gauze "snorkel", but the filter was cut a bit short and the snorkel fills the space. With hindsight the snorkel relieves the filter of pressure to filter when recirculating to sanitise the cooling coil (not that I think that would block this "Mark II" filter).

The removable 1" BSP end-caps allow access to brush out the filter. The "street elbow" fitting has a short length of silicon tube stuffed in it as a dip tube to grab as much wort from the boiler as possible.