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Pouring vs. siphoning
Do you guys prefer to pour your wort into your fermenter or do you cool it down all the way and siphon it in? The last couple of kits that I made I boiled 2 gallons and then poured it into 3 gallons of cold water. Not sure the best way to do it. They turned out great but was looking for the best way to do things. I hear both. I feel like every batch I make I can do part of the process better but the beer turns out good so I don't know if I am just nit-picky. Thanks again for all your feedback, I feel like I am learning more from this forum than any where else.
dpturner wrote:
Do you guys prefer to pour your wort into your fermenter or do you cool it down all the way and siphon it in? The last couple of kits that I made I boiled 2 gallons and then poured it into 3 gallons of cold water. Not sure the best way to do it. They turned out great but was looking for the best way to do things. I hear both. I feel like every batch I make I can do part of the process better but the beer turns out good so I don't know if I am just nit-picky. Thanks again for all your feedback, I feel like I am learning more from this forum than any where else.
Not sure if my method the best, but I do what I do ;-)
I do 4 gallon boils (better hop utilization than 2 gallon boil).
I put my sieve into the wort at the point I turn off the flame.
Put in two sanitized sealed 2 liter bottle of ice into the kettle and put the kettle with top on into a tub of ice (laundry basket) and let it cool.
Pour the wort through my sieve into one of my plastic buckets.
Toss the wort back and forth between two sanitized buckets about 10 times and get pretty nice aeration (develops a bit of a foam). Then I pour the aerated cooled wort through a sanitized funnel into a glass carboy and top it off to about 5-5.5 gallons. Good aeration is important and I figure 10 transfers back and forth is pretty good in ensuring this. I allow the foam to settle a bit and pitch my yeast and put on my airlock. Yeast usually kicks off within 12-24 hours. I often time my batches so I am racking a previous batch the day before the new one. Transfer the yeast and wash it (about a quart of water) into a gallon honey jar so the trub from the primary settles and after pouring off the yeast/water layer into a sanitized mason jar have a day for the yeast to settle from the water. Pour off the liquid and pitch the washed yeast into my wort. In these cases the brew starts kicking in just a few hours. I tend to brew stronger beers (6-10 lbs of extract), so having lots of yeast is vital. Works for me. Have never had a bad batch ;-).
I cool my wort (2-2.5gal) in an ice bath in the sink until the sides are warm (not hot) to the touch, then pour it into my fermenter on top of 2 gal of cold tap water, then top it off to 5 gal. I then pitch the yeast, put the top on and aerate by sloshing the wort around for about 5 minutes. The wort temp at time of pitching is usually about 70-75 degrees, depending on how long I let the wort sit in the ice bath. So far, so good.
I pour the hot wort into cold water in the fermentor. It helps aerate the wort that way. I've always done it that way. I'm an extract brewer so I don't do full boils yet.
MB
When I did extract I boiled 2.5 gallons, then through a strainer, poured the wort into the fermenter with really cold water. Good aeration, good pitch temp usually....
I do aprox 50% extract partial mashes. Usually boil 3.5 gal & don't use a hop bag.
Cool the wort in the sink to 70F or so, pour through a stainless steel strainer into the 6 gal bucket fermenter, get real good aeration, rinsing the hops with cold water, then top off to 5.5 gal.
Then pitch. So far, so good, for 15 years.
I brew all grain, but because it is winter time, I can not use my propane burner and 7 gal pot. So, I split my full boil into 3 pots on the stove inside. The wort chiller I made is too big to fit into my smaller pots so I can not use it in the winter time. But, I have 3+ feet of snow on the ground. What I do is grab the pot off the stove, take the sanitized cover and put it on, and I push the pot into the snowbank until it steadies itself. I reach pitchable temps within 10-15 min of doing this. Then I pour the wort into my bucket, making sure to let it splash to aerate it, and I have had no problems.
I used to cool a full boil in my double sink with an ice bath and cold water running for convection (30-45 min.) Then would pour the cooled wort through a sanitized seive sitting on top of a bucket. It would catch a lot of trub and aerate really well. I tried to siphon a few times, but the extra time and effort, 10 minutes to siphon, then you have to aerate between two buckets anyway, it didn't seem worth it. Now I have a spigot on my pot and a counter-flow-chiller. 10 minutes or so it empties my hot wort into a bucket at ale yeast temps, then I do the dump a few times to aerate, then pitch. I'd keep pouring if I were you, find one of those kitchen seives that has a long handle on it so it can balance on the opening of a bucket or that fits in a large funnel.
I think the pouring thing is fine when you are pouring right into cold top off water.
But I wanted to comment that the last couple times I have brewed I have been experimenting with trying to clear trub from my wort. (I think I have mentioned it before).
Well anyway, the last couple times I brewed, I did a good whirlpool after chilling with an IC. Then I would use my autosiphon to rack from the edge of the trub cone.
But I put the end of the siphon tube in my stainless steel mesh colander to catch the hop trub. It worked pretty well at aerating too.
I only mention it because several folks have talked about using sieves as well so I chimed in.
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