what's wrong with getting trub in fermenters???

[Brew Chef]

Can someone explain the disadvantages to getting kettle trub in the fermenters? On our pilot system, a lot of our trub goes to the fermenter, and besides for yeast harvesting, I'm not sure why it's so bad and why a lot of brewers are so hell bent on whirlpooling and keeping it out of the fermenters. We use hop bags which keeps most of the hops out of the fermenters. When i was a homebrewer, I never separated out the trub. Everything was just racked to a glass carboy....trub, hops, and all. Tim

[jwalts]

Trub tastes terrible, although it could be argued that having more in the fermenter would improve your hop utilization. It would also make yeast harvesting and clarification/filtration suuuuuuuuck.

Joe

[Brew Chef]

Does anyone dump it from the cone after it settles to the bottom?

[BrewerTL]

Yes....

We try to take out as much trub as possible at every step possible.

[Dough In]

Settling tank

I used to use a horizontal tank to allow settling out of the cold break. You can run your wort through the heat exchanger and cool it to pitch temp as usual then pumping it into a clean sanitized vessel to let the cold break settle out, I have seen brewers let the beer sit in tanks like this for up to 6 hrs before pumping the wort off the cold break trub or dumping out the cone and then pitching. Horizontal tanks are way faster than conical fermenter's for this purpose but either way is do-able. This is crucial to yeast health and yeast harvesting and is recommended especially when brewing Pilsner.

[Brew Chef]

I used to use a horizontal tank to allow settling out of the cold break. You can run your wort through the heat exchanger and cool it to pitch temp as usual then pumping it into a clean sanitized vessel to let the cold break settle out, I have seen brewers let the beer sit in tanks like this for up to 6 hrs before pumping the wort off the cold break trub or dumping out the cone and then pitching. Horizontal tanks are way faster than conical fermenter's for this purpose but either way is do-able. This is crucial to yeast health and yeast harvesting and is recommended especially when brewing Pilsner.

I thought it was beneficial to yeast health in the fermenter but bad for harvesting "clean" yeast. Either way I want to keep it out, but not lose a lot of wort doing so.

[wiredgourmet]

I thought it was beneficial to yeast health in the fermenter but bad for harvesting "clean" yeast. Either way I want to keep it out, but not lose a lot of wort doing so.

Yes and no. Yeast like it as we like candy, but it's not necessarily good for them, at least in the context of our purposes. The more trub remains, the more undesirable metabolic byproducts can be produced.

This will be more or less a problem depending on the type of beer you're making, fermentation temperature, pitch rates, yeast strain, and other factors. But in general, the less trub the better.

As for losing wort, process losses are the nature of the beast. Don't get too hung up on how much beer you *could* produce because this tempts one to cut corners.

[bmxfrank]

save your heat exchanger

Besides the beer, if trub is getting to your fermenter its going through your heat exchanger. that makes for more mess to clean, more potential bacteria haboring "things" hanging out in there, slowly clogging and slowing down your exchange time, etc.

Trub also contains I belive boiled out iso-alpha acids and non desirable protiens. (its been a while so I might be off on this one a bit). You dont want these in the beer for purposes of clarity and stability, chill haze, etc. hence why you want a good vigorous boil, a hot break, and a cold break. From what I saw online "...elevated levels of esters and fusel alcohols and promote the formation of chill or permanent haze in the finished beer."

Bringing trub into the fermenter defeats the work you have accomplished.

You can get more info about boiling benefits at http://www.bjcp.org/study.php#wort.