Getting the last from your boil

stevezx7r · Post by **stevezx7r** » Tue May 20, 2008 8:43 am

Is it just me that squeezes every last drop from the hops at the end of a boil?

I suppose I get a little extra liquor from the hops plus bitterness, anyone else bother doing this or am I a skinflint?

ritchie · Post by **ritchie** » Tue May 20, 2008 9:13 am

makes sense to me. how do you do it? push it through a seive?

mysterio · Post by **mysterio** » Tue May 20, 2008 9:53 am

I'm with DaaB, hops are full of tannins which are kept partially at bay by the acidic wort, plus all the trub gunk - not worth it for a couple of litres of wort IMO.

retourrbx · Post by **retourrbx** » Tue May 20, 2008 9:57 am

I leave mine where it is - add a little more water at the start to make up for your losses

BarnsleyBrewer · Post by **BarnsleyBrewer** » Tue May 20, 2008 11:17 am

DaaB wrote:
retourrbx wrote:I leave mine where it is - add a little more water at the start to make up for your losses
that's the best approach imo, or add it through out the boil.

Yeh, me too.
I would not attempt to sparge hops.

BB

steve_flack · Post by **steve_flack** » Tue May 20, 2008 11:43 am

I have read that some Belgian brewers press their used hops to recover as much wort as possible and then centrifuge to remove trub before fermentation. The reason given is that in the Belgian tax system, tax is payable on the volume of wort in the kettle. Any losses after the wort has been boiled is wort that tax has already been paid on.

BlightyBrewer · Post by **BlightyBrewer** » Tue May 20, 2008 12:22 pm

That explains a lot about Belgian beer!

stevezx7r · Post by **stevezx7r** » Tue May 20, 2008 9:15 pm

I tend to add water throughout but recently I've began to use my spoon to squeeze the hops, the liquor then goes through a sieve into the FV. No problems with tanins, that i've noticed anyway. Saying that, I doubt I would notice any tanins as I tend to use lots of hops so maybe they mask it?

Dennis King · Post by **Dennis King** » Tue May 20, 2008 9:18 pm

Never sparge, always still get the gravity wanted.

mattmacleod · Post by **mattmacleod** » Thu May 22, 2008 12:25 pm

Not an issue for me as I use pellet hops. I chill my wort in the kettle and let all of the break material and hop gunk settled down hard to the bottom. I then syphon the clear wort off the top into my fermenter.

In the past I have sparged and even wrung out the hops as you describe but that was in my formative "rowdy teenager" brewing days and I couldn't really tell you what affect it had other than getting more wort into the fermenter.

russt1969 · Post by **russt1969** » Thu May 22, 2008 10:18 pm

BarnsleyBrewer wrote:
DaaB wrote:
retourrbx wrote:I leave mine where it is - add a little more water at the start to make up for your losses
that's the best approach imo, or add it through out the boil.
Yeh, me too.
I would not attempt to sparge hops.

BB

I'm with that lot

TC2642 · Post by **TC2642** » Fri May 23, 2008 1:10 pm

DaaB wrote:Yeah all those nasty hop tannins and trub do wonders for your beer

Some people gently sparge them, I wouldn't even do that personally.

I always squeeze as much out through a sieve as possible and I've never had any trouble with tannin extraction, I think it may be something to do with the fact that my sparge ph is around the 5.2 -5.5 mark, no clarity issues either. I guess I'm just tight and want to get the very last drop out of those hops. Yeay Belgian brewers all the way for me!

RabMaxwell · Post by **RabMaxwell** » Sun May 25, 2008 10:12 pm

I have sparged my hops for years mainly because of the volume & size of some of my equipment.My CFC has a 15 mil inner diameter & is about 35 - 40 feet long that hold a lot of wort & my boiler is a little bit too small.I normally use between 400 - 600g of hops so it probably acts as a good filter for trub ect as i never have any problems

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Getting the last from your boil

Getting the last from your boil