Seeking Strategy for Separating Wort from Hop Trub

I went through all this for months. Spiders, bags, everything. This works perfect!!!!



That's all pellets and trub from 11 gallons of IPA, 3/4# hops. No issue at all separating at all. That is 1 1/4" SS hose braid, just over half of the perimeter of the kettle. Runs on a pump with W/P. I went to the local coupling and hose shop and had them cut the SS braid for me. Put a SS plug in the far end. The pick-up side has a SS reducer from 3/4" to 1/2" which screws right onto my 1/2" SS elbow. Could also just SS hose clamp the braid onto whatever you have for a pickup tube.

 

I use 0.025 gallons per ounce in my calcs.

 

I use this as well, but increase the wort left in the kettle a little too. Hit my numbers every time on Vike's BrewCipher.

 

I had (have) the same hop spider you linked to. My experience is exactly like you stated; fairly serious under-utilization of the hops as you approach the 2 ounce level. It now gathers dust on my shelf of "good ideas that didn't work".

Now I rely on a bazooka filter, similar to @jbakajust1. When I bought my "dust collector", I asked the same company if they would modify their "12 inch kettle screen" filter (that's what they call it) to have both ends "crimped" (no opening). I fabricated an opening in the middle (wire cutters and lots of cursing) to fit under my elbow pick-up (my elbow was un-threaded). It works like in the pic above but is centered on the pick-up (elbow). It is a grade B PITA to clean but does a respectable job of filtering hops debris. Oh yeah, I toss my pellet hops into nylon paint bags (fairly large) suspended over the kettle. Never use more than 2 ounces per bag and regularly stir during the boil. Just like @jbakajust1 (my hero) I whirlpool my late additions through all of this (20-30 minutes), so it sees the hop debris many times. At the end of the brew-day it looks like a green turd . . . albeit a very symmetrical g-t. I really feel bad that I have no photos . . .

For early bittering addition I've gone to hop extract . . . the way gentlemen bitter their beer.

My estimate for wort-hop-absorption is 0.02343 gallons (3 ounces) per ounce of hops (take that, Brewcipher!).

 

Heh. BrewCipher can take that. Or any other value someone wants to enter.

 

I use the same steel mesh filter baskets. I don't experience poor hop utilization compared to using hop bags. For example, I often use 5-6oz of hops in the kettle with two filters. Not a huge amount of hops compared to what some brewers use. The amount of hop flavor typically exceeds most professional IPAs in the $12 per sixer range.

If you brew with more than 3oz of hops and want to use steel mesh filter baskets, you will need more than one filter. The 4x10 is good for 3oz. The 6x11 is good for 6oz. Both of them can hold more, but they get too crowded. I use one to three filters depending on the quantity of hops.

Stirring inside the filters and stirring the wort every 2-3 minutes during the last 20 minutes of the boil is sufficient to circulate the flavor hops. Steeped hops get stirred twice during a 30 minute steep.

 

I use a plate chiller without a pump which is another reason why I use hop filter baskets.