The Grain Father

[Peter Smith]

http://www.grainfather.com/

Mangrove Jacks new all grain unit - its nice

[John H]

My wort by comparison was the clearest I've ever had when compared to BIAB. I was quite careful not to compress the grain when I pushed the deflection plate down hard before the sparge.

[Mark Weusten]

Next batch I will try not to disturb grainbed and not compress grainbed. When I was filling my fermenter the first 3 inches was all trub then it began to run clear.

[Dene McDonald]

It might not only be trub, it could be cold break which technically is trub but forms when cooling (the opposite of hot break).  That's why I was suggesting recircing back into the vessel when cooling as it will reduce the cold break getting in.

[Peter Smith]

you will have to get a conical with a dump value....

I dont get why MJ have not released a decent 5-600 conical like the ss one

[John H]

Clarification - My wort into the kettle was clear-as, my wort into the fermenter had a fair amount of trub in the beginning, My theory was that the hops made a filter bed around the pump inlet screen and it got clearer.

Peter's suggestion of a conical sounds on the money.

Aside from whirlpooling - what other measures do the 3V boys do for trub management and how successful is it?

[Dene McDonald]

3v doesn't have anywhere near the amount of trub so it's not as much of a problem. That's why I have just moved to 3v from BIAB.

The only other thing I can suggest is is a hop bag during the boil.

[Peter Smith]

whirl pool needs cooling to get the trub to drop out, I think personally an immersion chiller would be better then a counter flow to leave the cold break in the kettle 

[Mark Weusten]

Dene I am keen to try the hop bag idea. I take it you end up with as many bags in the boil as hop additions? Other thing i noticed when cleaning the filter is that it had a big clump of hops around it so doubt it was filtering much at all. I wonder if a second skin around the outside if it would help.

[Taubin]

I'm considering making a hop spider

https://byo.com/build-it-yourself/item/2427-build-a-hop-spider-proj...

Don't use PVC (as they did) but you can find a garbage disposal ring at the hardware and do the same thing. 

[Dene McDonald]

You can use either a single bag pegged to the side where you add your hops, or multiple bags thrown in for each addition. As Taubin says hop spiders are good.

[Cain Harland]

I made one out of a small (like 1 liter) stainless pot with a big hole cut in the bottom turned upside down. A lot of grain bags are too fine I have started using a hop sock instead of a big grain bag an IMO the better flow form the courser mesh more than makes up for the smaller size

[Chris]

a hop ball works well and they are easy to keep on a line so they don't get stuck at the bottom and easy to clean.

http://www.brewshop.co.nz/brewing-equipment/brewing/hop-ball.html

A hop sock generally needs a weight added to ensure it goes down. Although people add ping pong balls when they dry hop in kegs so that they can easily get it out afterwards.

Many ways to skin a cat i guess. Beauty of homebrewing is the option