hop strainers

[delboy]

Ok another brew another blocked hop strainer . Its one of the H&G hop strainers with the slits which i have modified by cutting about as many slits as was orginally in it again with a hacksaw.
Sometimes it preforms ok, some times all you have to do is show it some hops and it blocks.

I read that hop strainers perform better with holes rather than slits (slits better for grains), i was wondering would it help to drill a bunch of holes in my existing hop strainer?

How easy is it to drill copper and what size hole is best for hop filtering?

[oblivious]

What boiler are you using, I found the hop and grape one did not really fit the 5 gallon Bruheat Electrim.

[erebus]

What boiler are you using, I found the hop and grape one did not really fit the 5 gallon Bruheat Electrim.

I found the same, I've managed to get some piping to connect to the tap, but the hot water from the boiler loosens the piping. So far it hasn't fallen off but I may have just been luckly.

Either way it sounds like Delboy's probably is that the strainer is actually blocking, not falling off. Delboy do you just open the tap fully from the start? I read somewhere on here that it's better to start the drain off slowly at first. It allows the hops to form a better bed around the strainer.

[Mashman]

I used to have a problem with slots, no problems at all since using this


Without checking I think the holes are 3mm diameter

[delboy]

I have a Brupaks strainer and it never fails. The holes are around 3mm but it's made of a rolled copper mesh so you get more holes than an equivilent sized drilled strainer.
Copper is relatively easy to drill but for a tenner i'd go with the Brupaks one.



btw the run off is very good also.

Its a H&G boiler, i think i've asked this before but how easy is it to fit the brupaks strainer onto that boiler and the taps that suit it or will i need a different tap compatabile with the brupaks strainer?

[delboy]

Cheers for the replies everyone much appreciated, i think i'll have to purchase one of those. It'll probably be the last bit of equipment for a long time. In the new year the brewery will be going into belt tightening mood and buying ingredients only.

[mysterio]

I use the same slotted manifold (with extra slots sawed in). I used to have the same problems but I think the secret is after you've cooled the wort with the IC, cover it and forget about it for 45 minutes and let the hops settle into a nice loose filter, then you can run off at a fairly decent rate. My recipes frequently contain more than 200grams of hops and I never have any problems.

[delboy]

I use the same slotted manifold (with extra slots sawed in). I used to have the same problems but I think the secret is after you've cooled the wort with the IC, cover it and forget about it for 45 minutes and let the hops settle into a nice loose filter, then you can run off at a fairly decent rate. My recipes frequently contain more than 200grams of hops and I never have any problems.

Thanks for the advice mysterio, i actually do leave it and usually for longer than that too

I think it depends on the hops to a large extent as well, the SNPA clone i did the other day had over 150g of hops in a 5G batch and the runoff from it was fine. A lot of this was cascasde and it was full of intact flowers.

Where as i used a very small amount of target (20g or something like that) in a brew, came out of the pack (gold foil) in little bits. These bits did a fantastic job of blocking the hop strainer, even in those quantitiies.

The EKGs i used in last nights brew were similar but not as bad.

All in all though i've had it with the H&G strainer its too tempermental and a bad design IMO, for the sake of 12 quid i want blocked strainers to be a thing of the past

[mysterio]

Fair enough. It is a bad design, I agree. I can't count the amount of times i've taken great care making everything is sanitary, and then having to blow back into the strainer to unblock the hops.

[brewsters millionths]

now that's an interesting take on how to aereate the wort

[Vossy1]

I just couldn't get on with copper manifolds and I tried just about all the various option for them before going for a Morebeer false bottom.
DaaB's mash tun plate fb will do the job and it's cheap as chips.
The spatter guard type also worked for me no probs.

Incedently, the Morebeer FB's holes are large enough to allow hop seeds through which is a PIA. Even when I allowed the copper to rest for 30 min with late hops, the seeds still got through the FB. Perhaps they get trapped there during the boil, I don't know, but there are always hundreds under the FB and lots get through to FV

[Aleman]

A Hop Stopper clone is pretty easy to make, and both Rab and I find them really effective.

[Danny]

I got a tea mesh ball infuser for about 50p from a hardware shop, snipped it in half and then stuck it over the outlet hole in my converted burco ... the holes are so fine nothing gets through ...

[brewsters millionths]

just threw together a six inch square copper manifold with a row of 2mm holes along the base of each straight (15mm copper) for yesterdays brew and it worked fine.

[brewsters millionths]

here it is[img][img]http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i76/b ... 007029.jpg[/img][/img]
do you think the holes are ok for mashing as well?
i used the short lengths from what was supposed to be a big mash manifold for the 100l pot, be good to rotate them back in.