The Importance of Removing Trub
TroubleShooting
Royce Faina — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania asks,
After wort chilling, most of the trub is left on the bottom of the kettle. For years I’ve poured this residual trub through a stainless steel strainer with the hops acting as a filter. Should I leave all the trub out and what advantage does this have? Neither I nor my family and friends notice anything off regarding flavor and aroma.
The range of methods used by brewers to produce beer certainly is not lacking of variety. There are commercial brewers of great, hoppy beers who accept high wort losses when high hop loads are separated from wort using whirlpools designed for more moderately hopped beers. Some brewers use centrifuges to maximize wort yield flowing from the brewhouse into fermentation and are also making terrific beers. And others use hop backs for a range of purposes including whole hop removal from wort, late hop aroma addition, and as a filter to remove trub from boiled wort. All of these wort-saving methods are great options depending on the size of the brewery and the types of beers being brewed. Suffice to say, it sounds like you are happy with your beers, the method you are using is not some sort of Frankenbrew technique, and you have your method developed around this practice. Keep on doing what you’re doing! Also keep reading for another take on this topic.
There is a common brewing adage that goes something like this: When the opportunity presents itself to remove stuff from beer, seize the sediment! Whatever falls out of wort or beer is probably not going back into solution and because gravity is always on the clock, removing solids along the journey from wort to beer just makes sense. It’s also true that some of these solids contain flavor-active compounds that can adversely affect beer flavor. A few examples of continual removal of solids includes trub removal from hot wort in a whirlpool vessel, cold wort flotation, cold wort settling, skimming brandt/braun hefe from the surface of fermenters, racking after primary fermentation is complete, and cone-blows when fermenting in a unitank. And the use of special devices, like the Sierra Nevada Hop Torpedo, confine hops and/or spices inside the contraption so that beer can be infused with flavor in a controlled fashion that also minimizes beer losses.
There is a common brewing adage that goes something like this: When the opportunity presents itself to remove stuff from beer, seize the sediment!
Another real benefit to many of these techniques is a reduction in wort/beer losses. In the language of commercial jargon, it sounds like one of the main reasons you began straining your “whirlpool bottoms” was to increase your yield. And that’s a great approach to brewing, independent of batch size. Why waste good stuff when options are on the table? Brewers have a long history of developing methods to increase efficiency. The best methods improve efficiency while simultaneously improving beer qualities, such as aroma, taste, flavor stability, improved microbiological stability, or better beer foam stability. There’s another brewing truism related to this discussion: Whenever pondering weird and funky brewing practices, be they old or new, follow the money for the likely explanation. Hope this discussion was helpful and that you continue to brew efficiently!
