False Bottom in Brew Kettle?

[derfburg]

I use one in my brew kettle and will be doing a Janet's brown this weekend. The most hops I have used with it yet. This is 3/8 size style so kinda slow flow out. I gravity chill to a chillzilla.

I am worried about the amout of pellet hops and cloggin the port. Does anyone else use this method and have you have any issues?

[ajdelange]

I really don't much like pellet hops for this very reason. Some always wind up in the fermenter (but they do seem to settle out there). I have found that using some leaf hops, even if the bulk of the IBU's come from pellets, helps. The leaf settles on the false bottom and then strains out the pellet fragments. It's not a perfect arrangement but better than what happens if you use no leaf at all.

[Charlie]

You might try a slotted copper ring. I'm on my third BK and have made SCRs for each one. So far so good, even with pellets, although you're definitely going to get more crap in the wort with pellets.

Charlie (doesn't buy hop pellets unless he has to)

[dontblake]

Way back when I bought my 10-gal brewpot (at least 13 years now), it came with a false bottom. Fairly crude and "unique" (read: an "artisan" had to pound the thing just right so that it'd fit in the pot). Anyway, I've been using it for all of my boils and find that it makes cleanup a bit easier. To ensure that I don't get any hop material in the fermenter, I have wrapped a bit of ss screen on my copper dip tube. The screen doesn't play well with pellets, so I don't use em.

I've recently upgraded to a keggle and now can use my 10-gal brew pot (with original false bottom) as a mash tun - for when I make 10-gal batches or big beers (my original mash tun is a 7-gal gott cooler, so I'm a bit limited on 5-gal brew strength).

But to your point, if you're really concerned about the pellets clogging, you might try a 2-stage screen - a copper scrubby wrapped around a SS screen works pretty well.
cheers