Break

[Capn Ahab]

Been offered a counter-flow chiller gratis (Happy daze!).

One slight concern is all the break material ending up in the FV. I have been told on here that this is not a problem in starters, so presumably the same applies to fermenting an entire brew. Is anyone aware of any problems it might cause, like haze or off flavours?

I am thinking about draining the copper into one vessel then running off from there once the break has settled out. Is it worth it?

[smeggedup]

It's all I've ever used and fine no problems at all, I was worried at first but it all compacts down and I'm generally left with about 1 litre of sediment.
I know some micro breweries do it this way and is the norm for the Dave porter systems.
I believe break forms food for the yeast.

[coatesg]

I never had issues when using one. A lot of the cold break happens well after you get the temp down anyhow- it's not an instant thing. Much of the break material in kettle should get filtered out by hop bed.

[Bribie]

All the break won't end up in the FV. At boiling temperatures, the HOT break forms and flocculates into flakes, then settles down to the bottom of the kettle when you stop boiling. So by extracting the wort from above this layer of hot break, you can draw crystal clear wort out of the kettle, whether chilling or running into a plastic cube for "no chill" cooling.

The COLD break occurs in the wort when it cools down, in the case of a chiller that happens just about straight away. The cold break doesn't affect the quality of the beer, as posted it can be of use to the yeast but mostly just settles out with the yeast trub. Many larger breweries do indeed remove the cold break because it steals space in their fermenters - quite understandably as they are run by accountants, but in our case it's not a big issue.

[Capn Ahab]

Cheers chaps. I think this new chiller might be inspiration for a general all round kit upgrade to deal with some of the more finicky parts of my process, all of which (funnily enough!) happen when moving large quantities of liquor or wort from vessel to vessel.