hop blocker-what works for you?

[martin w]

what are you guys using to keep the hops/cold break and any other desirables in your kettle and out of your fermenter?

i'm losing excessive amounts in my kettle and i've decided i should do something about it, whirlpooling doesn't work for me due to kettle design, i occasionally use an old grain bag but i normally forget until its to late, ideally i'll know up some kind of braided hose type filter but i'd like to know what you're actually using and what works,would you do the same again if you rebuilt your sysyem etc etc

cheers

martin

[Nick T]

I've tried straining through swiss voile but it blocks up very quickly. So I normally just use Jokings 'wort recovery protocol' system, put all the trub and unrecoverable wort into some sanitised 3 litre jugs, old whiskey bottles (the old highland park ones are good!) etc, put in fridge overnight to let the wort rise to the top and then add it into the fermenter the next day.

[Pilgrim]

I use a hop bag made from Swiss Voile to keep the hops out and that works well. I got the wife to sew it up from the remnants left over from my BIAB bag. It's double skinned and layed flat it measures around 600mm long by 100mm wide. It's long enought to tie off to one of the handles on my 56ltr pot. As for the trub, as Nick said, I use Joking's wort recovery method, although I find that it's pretty much settled after an hour or so and add it to the fermenter then.

[Nick T]

Do you use pellets? And they just go in the bag and that is enough to get the flavour and bitterness into the wort?

[martin w]

yeah, pretty much exclusively pellets, its not a real problem when i use the bag but i often forget an d remember just at about the point when the pellets hit the wort! then the missus has normally filed it somewhere i can't find so the rest of the additions get thrown in with a mumbled'fuck it'!

i remember reading about the wort recovery technique but i couldn't remember the name to search for it!

[Doublehoppy]

Here's the link.
http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/profiles/blogs/the-wort-recovery-pr...

[denimglen]

I used to use one of those bags - attached to a piece of PVC pipe and a stainless rod to keep it over the wort - as seen on homebrewtalk.com.

But I gave up on it. Worked OK but I'd rather just through them in.

Now I just account for the loss and don't worry about it. I get about 19L of clear wort into the ferment and about 1 L of gunky-shit wort, 70% efficiency into the fermenter so I'm happy.

[Matt]

made this:

Its perforated stainless radiused to the pot so can still get a decent whirlpool going. There is a diptube (not yet made in this photo) that goes through the front plate that attaches to a compression fitting inside the pot. The perforated stainless is very thin (b1tch to weld!) and has ~1mm holes, we got the material as a freebee and if you were going to make something similar Id highly recommend going thicker for ease of manufacture. Thicker also means larger hole size but similar designs use 2mm holes and these apparently work well...
Matt

[martin w]

i like the look of that, if only i had a welder! and knew how to use one for that matter as well!

[Matt]

If you dont mind spending some cash you could buy one of these (half way down the page):

http://www.beerbelly.com.au/mashequip.html

you might also need patience in getting the transaction sorted though, have found beerbelly hard to contact