{"id":224,"date":"2014-03-23T12:54:28","date_gmt":"2014-03-23T17:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/?p=224"},"modified":"2014-10-03T23:42:43","modified_gmt":"2014-10-04T04:42:43","slug":"whirlpool-fever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/2014\/03\/23\/whirlpool-fever\/","title":{"rendered":"Whirlpool Fever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Players<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Since our boil kettle was first constructed last year we <a href=\"http:\/\/theelectricbrewery.com\/boil-kettle?page=3\">followed Kal&#8217;s lead<\/a> and used a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ihomebrewsolutions.com\/products\/the-hop-stopper\/\">Hop Stopper<\/a> to filter wort.\u00a0 This product works fairly well and prevents both hops and some break material from hitting the chiller and eventually the fermenter.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to clean with a kitchen sprayer, and is very well constructed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Setup<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But the Hop Stopper does have some drawbacks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>efficiency<\/strong>: quite a bit of wort is left in the kettle. We use sanitary magnetic drive pumps (like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Chugger-Stainless-Brewing-Comparable-809-SS-HS-C\/dp\/B009Z17DJQ\/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=britri-20&amp;linkCode=w00&amp;linkId=6NQZRRDESZGZUEPH&amp;creativeASIN=B009Z17DJQ\">Chugger<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00EN33O6M\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00EN33O6M&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=britri-20&amp;linkId=I3JUPOVD5RNCALHU\">US Solar<\/a>, or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B002O47P26\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B002O47P26&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=britri-20&amp;linkId=TP4RZCYZ2M5T2PAF\">March<\/a>) to transfer wort and these require continuous flow with no air pockets, otherwise the pumps lose prime.\u00a0 When the wort level gets below the Hop Stopper, the hops and hot break clogging the screen prevent wort from getting inside the screen quickly enough, and air gets into the lines instead.\u00a0 Also, because our kettles are quite large, each gallon is less than 1 inch in height, and the bottom is flat (unlike a Sanke keg), which means that when the wort level drops too low for the Hop Stopper, we still have a full gallon\u00a0 or two left.<\/li>\n<li><strong>babysitting<\/strong>: When the wort level gets too low, you either have to leave wort in the kettle or use a spoon to agitate the hop stopper (by pressing down and releasing every second) to let more wort into the screen.\u00a0 This does work, but if you&#8217;re trying to control the flow through the pump to hit the right temperature, agitate the Hop Stopper screen, and watch for when air starts to enter the pump intake to prevent loss of prime, you&#8217;re likely to screw something up because everything is happening at once.\u00a0 You need five hands, and you&#8217;ve only got four, or maybe even just two.<\/li>\n<li><strong>whirlpooling<\/strong>: you can&#8217;t easily whirlpool since the Hop Stopper blocks the circulation pattern, and picks up from the center instead of the side.\u00a0 We&#8217;re interested in this technique that many traditional breweries use and we&#8217;d like to replicate it in our setup.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Hook<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Whirlpooling is the circulation of the wort in the boil kettle after the boil is done to concentrate the hot break, cold break, grain particles, and hop bits into the center of the kettle.\u00a0 Due to the magic of physics and fluid dynamics solid particles will move to the center when the liquid is stirred and then allowed to settle.\u00a0 This leaves clear wort at the sides, and with a side pickup in the kettle, allows you to leave most of the solid stuff behind providing clearer wort and eventually clearer beer.<\/p>\n<p>Second, you can use the whirlpool to provide increased hop aroma and flavor by steeping a separate addition of hops while the whirlpool is circulating.\u00a0 Since during the whirlpool the wort is around 170 &#8211; 200\u00b0F (82 &#8211; 93\u00b0C) volatile flavor and aroma compounds are not driven off like they are during the boil.\u00a0 Many traditional UK breweries use this technique to increase the complexity and clarity of their beer.\u00a0 We&#8217;d like to try it too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Tale<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The first step was the removal of the Hop Stopper and the addition of a side pickup.\u00a0 Instead of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bargainfittings.com\/index.php?route=product\/product&amp;product_id=151\">traditional dip tube<\/a>, we decided to use a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B003H05EJW\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B003H05EJW&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=britri-20&amp;linkId=CUIGOZEZC2TZBU46\">90\u00b0 street elbow<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/wp-before.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-225 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/wp-before.jpg\" alt=\"wp-before\" width=\"360\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/wp-before.jpg 600w, http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/wp-before-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a> and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00G9DPDPE\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00G9DPDPE&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=britri-20&amp;linkId=ICORTILDTLG2M7CT\">barb fitting<\/a> at the bottom outlet of the kettle.\u00a0 Besides the whirlpool benefits, during the cleaning process when recirculating PBW after a brew session, we need to drain all the PBW water from the kettle, which is now easily accomplished by tilting the kettle towards the barb.\u00a0 In short, the new barb fitting allows us to drain <em>almost all<\/em> liquid from the kettle, whether that&#8217;s wort or cleaning water.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Since the barb draws from the side, after the whirlpool has settled all the break material and hops in the center, and only clear wort is left on the sides, we&#8217;ll only get clear wort into the fermenter.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Next because we use pumps, we need some mechanism to induce the whirlpool in the kettle.\u00a0 Yes, we could stir vigorously with a spoon, and we&#8217;ve tried that, but it doesn&#8217;t work as well as you&#8217;d think due to the magnesium anode, the heating element, and the thermometer getting in the way during 5 gallon brews.\u00a0 Instead, we constructed a whirlpool arm that attaches to our kettle inlet and is easily removed for<a href=\"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/wp-after.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-226 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/wp-after.jpg\" alt=\"wp-after\" width=\"360\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/wp-after.jpg 600w, http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/wp-after-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a> increased flexibility.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">As you can see, attached to the upper kettle inlet is the new whirlpool arm, which directs the wort along the side of the kettle and induces the actual whirlpool when wort is taken from the kettle and pumped back in.\u00a0 The bottom level of the arm allows us to still brew and whirlpool 5 gallon batches if we want to.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Why did we choose a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00J16R3JA\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00J16R3JA&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=britri-20&amp;linkId=34TZEVHJQWVMWSHP\">camlock fitting<\/a> for the arm?\u00a0 Well, when we&#8217;re fly-sparging, wort is continuously draining into the kettle and we need to monitor the gravity to ensure it doesn&#8217;t drop below 1.010, which begins to extract undesirable tannins from the grain husks in the mash.\u00a0 The boil kettle inlet is where we collect the sample from, and we need it to be easily accessible, so we&#8217;ll only attach the whirlpool arm after the boil is done.\u00a0 Second, allowing the whirlpool arm to be disconnected helps ensure it can be cleaned well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>The Finale<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We don&#8217;t actually have a finale yet since we haven&#8217;t tried the whirlpool arm in a full brew.\u00a0 But we have tried the kettle outlet barb fitting, and it works great.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll definitely let you know how the whirlpool arm performs in the next brew.\u00a0 Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Players Since our boil kettle was first constructed last year we followed Kal&#8217;s lead and used a Hop Stopper to filter wort.\u00a0 This product works fairly well and prevents both hops and some break material from hitting the chiller and eventually the fermenter.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to clean with a kitchen sprayer, and is very &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/2014\/03\/23\/whirlpool-fever\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Whirlpool Fever<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}