Hot and cold breaks

[guypettigrew]

There are any number of posts here saying the cold break is fine, just allow it through to the FV and it will drop out and not cause any problems. It seems to be the hot break which causes the problems.

So, how are they separated out?

Surely they are both in the boiler.

Please help---this is keeping me awake!

Guy

[barney]

my hot break is filtered out by the hops when I pump the wort into the FV, The cold break as the wort passes through my plate chiller goes straight into the FV and settles out there. I am having sleepless nights over this as well, some say that the cold break is food for the yeast, but all i see is a 2" layer of cloudy crap at the bottom of FV. I can see a conical FV coming my way in the future.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

It's the same protein material involved in both the hot and cold breaks. Definitely not something to lose sleep over...

[far9410]

I may be wrong, I often am, but I reckon hot break occurs at , or just before boiling, and can be skimmed, if you can be arsed, cold break occurs as cooling begins, and will settle out. Most of which should be left behind with the hops in the copper. Oops now I'm for a telling off

[FatGaz]

I may be wrong, I often am, but I reckon hot break occurs at , or just before boiling, and can be skimmed, if you can be arsed, cold break occurs as cooling begins, and will settle out. Most of which should be left behind with the hops in the copper. Oops now I'm for a telling off

This is what I was led to believe as well.

[barney]

where the cold break ends up is more to do with procedure, IC chiller leaves cold break in boiler filtered by hops, PC leaves cold break in FV.

[adomant]

Hot break is formed as beads floating at the top of the kettle after an hour or so of boiling and is removed by the hop filter or by a sieve. Cold break is formed at the bottom as mushroom clouds by the combination of kettle finings (Irish moss / protofloc) and chilling. If a plate chiller is used, then cold break ends up in the fv, in which case in can be removed by scooping up the trub that forms on the top of the fv within 12-24 hours of fermentation or settling out and removing by siphoning away or drawing off from a bottom tap (from a conical)

[gregorach]

I may be wrong, I often am, but I reckon hot break occurs at , or just before boiling, and can be skimmed, if you can be arsed

You're wrong.

Hot break usually takes at least an hour of boiling to form properly.

[Scooby]

Yep, what you see at the start of the boil that you say can be skimmed is just the very start of the hot break.
The protein matter coagulates to form large particles during the boil and normally takes about an hour to
become lumps that will drop out.

[Capped]

I use a CF chiller so all the cold break ends up in the collection vessel. Folk say it doesn't hurt to ferment as is but I can't be doing with the thought of all that gunge floating around; maybe it's psychological, so I let it settle out for a coupla hours and leaving it all behind so all I get in the FV is nice clear wort. Works for me,and if I left it in and just happened to get sub-standard beer I'd blame myself for being a blatantly bone-idle bleeder and leaving it in,whether right or wrong!

[gregorach]

I never worry about getting cold break in my FV, and my beer's great.

I'm pretty sure there's a paper out there somewhere which shows that having break in the wort actually improves yeast health and performance.

[Scooby]

I use a CF chiller so all the cold break ends up in the collection vessel. Folk say it doesn't hurt to ferment as is but I can't be doing with the thought of all that gunge floating around; maybe it's psychological, so I let it settle out for a coupla hours and leaving it all behind so all I get in the FV is nice clear wort. Works for me,and if I left it in and just happened to get sub-standard beer I'd blame myself for being a blatantly bone-idle bleeder and leaving it in,whether right or wrong!

Some time ago I used a cfc and had the same feeling as you and followed your procedure to end up with clear wort in the fv. Then I thought what the heck and just
let the lot go in with no difference to the final beer that I could detect.

From Palmer 'How to brew' It is a good idea to remove the hot break (or the break in general) from the wort before fermenting. The hot break consists of various proteins
and fatty acids which can cause off-flavors, although a moderate amount of hot break can go unnoticed in most beers. The cold break is not considered to be much of a problem,
in fact a small amount of cold break in the fermenter is good because it can provide the yeast with needed nutrients

He did go on to say that removal of most of the break material is required for the cleanest tasting beer and is important in a very pale beer such as Pilsener style lager.

So according to him most of the cold break and some of the hot break makes little difference, unless you want the very best lager.

[far9410]

You're wrong.

Hot break usually takes at least an hour of boiling to form properly.

Not very often right, but I'm wrong again.

This misunderstanding of hot break comes from my extract brewing days, when the wort woud foam up at the point of boiling, bringing up a layer of nasties,and then would revert to a normal rolling boil.

[Bribie]

Hot break forms as little "breadcrumbs" in the wort during boiling and can be flocculated using a product like whirlfloc, irish moss, Brewbrite - there are heaps of them out there.
Then it sinks to the bottom of the FV and the wort coming out of the tap - either to chiller or to a no chill cube - is usually crystal clear as the hot break has been left behind.

The cold break as described above forms jelly-fish like floaties as the wort cools.

A couple of years ago I did an identical double brew, which I ran into two no chill cubes and allowed to cool. I poured the two clear top halves into one fermenter, the cloudy bottom halves into the other.

Fermented as normal then took them to a club meeting for evaluation - the few members who could tell the difference in the brews reckoned the cold break one had a bit more body and flavour, to them the non-cold-break one tasted a bit like a watered down version.

As you can see, the cold break FV ended up with a bigger layer of trub but basically the CB seems to just settle out and have little or no effect. As posted above perhaps if you have a brew which is a bit short on nutrients, maybe a big whack of sugar or rice or something in the brew, then some CB could be beneficial.





John Palmer's assertion that CB causes chill haze is a load of tosh IMHO, both the glasses were out of a keg at 2°

[Beer O'Clock]

You're wrong.

Hot break usually takes at least an hour of boiling to form properly.

Not very often right, but I'm wrong again.

This misunderstanding of hot break comes from my extract brewing days, when the wort woud foam up at the point of boiling, bringing up a layer of nasties,and then would revert to a normal rolling boil.

I believe that's called "coppering"