General thoughts about the Break

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NottsBrew

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I've just finished making a red ale and was - as always - disappointed to see how much wort was thrown away with the break.

I would estimate that about 15% of the wort went down the plughole! Am I being too wasteful? I was racking the wort into the fermentation bin and could see the break through the side of the vessel I was racking from. I could also view from the top. I could see some of the break was disappearing down the siphon tube. If I hadn't stopped when I did, much more of the break would have gone into the fermentation bin.

I would be interested to hear people's thoughts on the whole issue of break, wastage (and reduction of wastage) and effects of break that is allowed inside the fermentation bin.

Thanks in advance.
 
NottsBrew said:
I've just finished making a red ale and was - as always - disappointed to see how much wort was thrown away with the break.

I would estimate that about 15% of the wort went down the plughole! Am I being too wasteful? I was racking the wort into the fermentation bin and could see the break through the side of the vessel I was racking from. I could also view from the top. I could see some of the break was disappearing down the siphon tube. If I hadn't stopped when I did, much more of the break would have gone into the fermentation bin.

I would be interested to hear people's thoughts on the whole issue of break, wastage (and reduction of wastage) and effects of break that is allowed inside the fermentation bin.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Well, i only do small batches 5-10 litres, mainly extract but also done a small AG. I place a colander over the FV with some voil covering it(helps if someone can assist) then pour the wort into the voil and colander,seems to get most of the crud:thumb:
 
I'm not convinced that it is all that important to keep all the break in the kettle. I've dumped the whole lot through a sieve and ended up with crystal clear beer - it all ends up in the trub during fermentation / cold crash. That said, I haven't done a taste test.
 
Doing a partial mash (~2.75kg of grain) on the stove top, I just chucked the lot in the FV at the end of the process. The losses were 2-2.5L from the initial FV of 25L, including a one can (Coopers) kit.

This would compare to around 1 - 1.5L lost to trub at the end of a 25L batch made using the Grainfather (Grain Bill ~ 6kg). There is also a fair bit that never makes it to the FV in an AG brew - a litre or so?
 
I pass everything through a fine filter bag and even squeeze the liquid out of it if I've been using leaf hops. Minimises the loss and it's never seemed to have a detrimental effect - beer tastes great and clears perfectly well.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
 
I always get a good inch of break material in the bottom of the FV. I read the Brulosophy article (above) ages ago so have never tried to not transfer it. I don't think I've had any issues...
 
I have had 1 cm trub and often 1 inch trub.. I think it makes no difference, it will settle out so if you're concerned just dump it all in the FV and let it compress down..
 
You could transfer every thing from the kettle to the fv then leave it for an hour and transfer again once it's settled out. You might get a slightly higher bhe.
Personally, I wouldn't bother.
 
Just to chime in here, a lot of micro breweries use heat exchange plate chillers. When using a plate chiller pretty much all of the cold break material goes into the fermenter because the wort is cooled almost instantly whilst in transit to the fermentation vessel.
 
I do find if I Swirl my chiller (because its quite small diameter for the 50L pot) I am kicking more up.. but if its left to settle in teh kettle the wort is much clearer and in general you can get less break material in the FV by just letting it settle.. Kind of what Red Darren says..

Or you can just transfer and not worry about it :smile:
 
My boiler has a tap fitted with a mesh hop filter. I've found that with hoppy brews the hops help to filter out the hot break crud, but with low hop brews like brown ale I have much more trouble as the filter continually clogs up with hot break and I have to scrape it continually to get the wort to flow (and it's pretty cloudy then with hot break material). This is a bit of a pain to do but as others have said it all settles out in the end in the FV trub. I usually expect zero loss of wort when transferring doing it like this.
However I recently made some heather ale and this was crystal clear for the whole transfer, right down to the last drop, so when I followed it with a brown ale this time I also added heather to the boil and once again the heather trapped the hops and break gunk and the whole volume of wort transferred through crystal clear, so I might use this as a standard method for low hop brews in future.
 
I use a hop sock on the end of the hose from my boiler. It catches a lot of break material. Sometimes I have to stop and empty/wash out the hop sock half way through as it fills up.

IMG_9472.jpg
 
I stopped worrying about break material and have stopped using a filter. I just dump the lot from the boiler into the fv, hops, break material, everything and my beers are as clear as ever.
 
Wow! Thanks everyone. All of your advice was really helpful. I won't be wasting so much beer on my next brew.

:drink:
 

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