Blichmann HopBlocker

New to the Blichmann Engineering lineup is the patented HopBlocker boil kettle filtration system. Over a year of brutal, but tasty field testing, Blichmann's dedicated R&D team yielded a filtration system that has up to 95% efficiency on pellet hops and is virtually impervious to plugging! Blichmann has tested the HopBlocker with more than a pound of pellet hops in a 20 gallon batch, and it brought them to their knees.

Traditional screen filters draw from the bottom of the kettle - immediately sucking all pellet hops and fine break material into the screen, where they plug. In Blichmann Engineering's HopBlocker, preferential flow leaves settled fine break material (hops and trub) undisturbed at the bottom of the kettle while draining the majority of the wort through a coarse filter from the top down. When the wort level is just a couple of inches from the bottom of the kettle, the fine filter element is then exposed by lifting the shield, and the remainder of the wort is filtered. It's an intuitive design that allows the fine filter to work only on a small portion of the wort, not all of it. The HopBlocker will filter up to 95% of the break material and hops from your wort without plugging. While it is designed specifically to complement Blichmann Engineering's BoilerMaker brew kettles, the HopBlocker can be installed in any manufacturer's kettle or keg.

Note:

• The HopBlocker is designed for use with pellet hops only. Whole/loose hops will plug the unit. While using whole hops, or a mix of whole and pellet hops, you must bag your whole hops in a large muslin grain bag. This will not affect the utilization rate and will result in significantly less wort loss.

Whole Hops Recommendations:

• Loose leaf hops generally plug the coarse screen. Therefore, we highly recommend using large muslin grain bags to avoid plugging. In addition, you lose a large amount of wort from leaf-hops absorption. Using a bag, you can squeeze most of the wort out with negligible effect on hop utilization and significantly easier cleanup. This method does not work for pellet hops because they pass through openings in the muslin bag. And finer mesh screens do not freely allow wort to pass so hop utilization is negatively affected.