Not desperate yet, but... things need to get better

okoncentrerad said:
That's interesting read! I thought it would be good practice to get the wort as clean as possible when transferring it to the fermentor. Would it be any difference depending of style of beer?
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Don't think style matters.

I use to filter my wort as well but I am all about cutting out steps that don't contribute to making better beer. Lots of people still filter so either way is acceptable. Really is just personal preference.
 
okoncentrerad said:
Why not filter the wort? Is there a good reason not to, apart from removing a possible cause of infection?
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The filter itself is far more of a source of infection than anything that comes out of the pot. You just boiled the crap out of everything in the pot so it's completely free of contaminating organisms. As soon as the filter is left to dry, it can pick up any wild stuff that's in the air and it has probably miles of surface are to harbor microorganisms. Yes, you can sanitize it and I'm sure you do, but why introduce another potential problem.
Besides, the protein in the pot is good yeast nutrient. Not much reason to go out of your way to keep it out unless your fermenter is particularly small and it makes it harder to get your yield.
 
J A said:
The filter itself is far more of a source of infection than anything that comes out of the pot. You just boiled the crap out of everything in the pot so it's completely free of contaminating organisms. As soon as the filter is left to dry, it can pick up any wild stuff that's in the air and it has probably miles of surface are to harbor microorganisms. Yes, you can sanitize it and I'm sure you do, but why introduce another potential problem.
Besides, the protein in the pot is good yeast nutrient. Not much reason to go out of your way to keep it out unless your fermenter is particularly small and it makes it harder to get your yield.
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Hmmmm.... Maybe I don’t need to filter between BK and FV. But I might use a hop spider to at least keep out the hop debris from the FV.
 
okoncentrerad said:
Why not filter the wort? Is there a good reason not to, apart from removing a possible cause of infection?
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It's unnecessary as long as you bag or use some other means of keeping the hop debris out of the fermentor. Filtering actually introduces a chance of infection - the more pieces of equipment your cool wort touches, the more chances to pick up a bug somewhere. Hop bags work fine as long as, as BoomerBrian said, there's room for wort to circulate once the hops rehydrate. The trub, the proteins formed during the hot and cold breaks, are flavorless and insoluble, they'll settle to the bottom of the fermentor and then, unless you're harvesting yeast and need to separate it, be completely harmless.
 
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Mase said:
Hmmmm.... Maybe I don’t need to filter between BK and FV. But I might use a hop spider to at least keep out the hop debris from the FV.
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Good plan - I like the stainless models with the very fine screen....
 
I throw my hops in without a bag, I don't strain or filter anything, I have hops in the fermenter and the beer is perfect, that part of brewing is a myth, sorry guys its really unnecessary to even try
 
OMB, you're likely right about hops in the primary being beer lore. I use the screen because, well, it takes no additional effort to get the hops out of the wort - I can freeze my bitterness profile at any point in the process by grabbing the handle and removing. And, despite its likely nature as beer lore, I like to keep the hop debris out of the fermentor.
 
Hops in the fermenter is great. I bag with most beers just to keep the yeast cake a little easier to re-use. If I'm doing a Pale with plans to do a big IPA next, I'll leave hops in for transfer and dry hop during primary fermentation because the little hop flavor that makes it through to the next batch won't hurt a thing.;)
 
I stick to the Kiss rule or less is best apprach to brewing no filtration i just let nature take its course then time temperature and hopefully great beer out the other end:).

I do use a bit of my biab bag material tied to the end of transfer hose going into keg to catch any remaining hop particles after cold crash. I boil this for 10 and soak in phosphoric acid prior to the rack.
 
Okay you guys are convincing :) probably no filtering from now on
 
okoncentrerad said:
Okay you guys are convincing :) probably no filtering from now on
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Baby steps.... we have been very successful with filtering between BK and FV, but it does require an emphasis on keeping the filter clean!
 
I use a bag for the boil mostly so I don't have to deal with hops plugging my dip tube, but I don't care particularly much either way.
 
Was looking at some bottled water today trying to find out what's in them but some of them had no info at all, and none had any info about alkalinity. I guess, the cheaper water the less information. It's unwise to use a no-info water? What about alkalinity, is there a rule of thumb regarding this in bottled water, or what would I do? Try to contact the producer?
 
okoncentrerad said:
Was looking at some bottled water today trying to find out what's in them but some of them had no info at all, and none had any info about alkalinity. I guess, the cheaper water the less information. It's unwise to use a no-info water? What about alkalinity, is there a rule of thumb regarding this in bottled water, or what would I do? Try to contact the producer?
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I use Deer Park Spring water. You can look up their water quality test results on line. Keep in mind, that commercial bottled water can come from many spring sources, so the water quality report will not be as accurate.
 
Or whatever municipal supply is nearby.
 
Now this is really odd and contradicts everything I've mentioned earlier. The reason I started this thread was because I had my first (disapointing) taste of my last brew, which was a "single mash splitted up to two boils". The first boil was that ESB with the unwanted off-flavor. The second boil was an american IPA and which I'm having my first tasting of at this moment.

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This beer is actually very nice, no hint of any off-flavor at all (yet...).

Am I right to belive that perhaps after all it's not a water problem, but rather a fermentation issue? I think most of my beers have had very bumpy ride in the fermentor, I have had very little control over temperature even though the temperature hasn't been in the extreme ends (what I know of).

This is my third IPA, the previous two have been just too dry, getting too low FG. This one got perhaps a little bit too low (1.008, expected 1.011) but not as much the previous. For these I have used US-05.

The other beers I've done, a standard bitter, a Northern English Brown Ale and the just mentioned ESB got a lower/much lower FG than expected. For these beers I used S-04 and Nottingham.

Not sure if I should be pleased with this or not, I really want to know what I'm doing wrong and I was beginning to get convinced it was the water :) I still think I probably will use other water for my next brew though...just to make sure what other water taste like.
 
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