[PORTERHAUS]

... is making me swear.  I have been using a full whirfloc tablet for the past 10+ batches and have gotten super clear wort prior to going into the kettle.  Today I decided to use one of the 4 or 5 Kick tablets I had left.  My wort is uber cloudy today after the chill.   

Try it or whirlfloc with 5 mins left in the boil, after you add your acid ~10 min to drop the boil ph

That's what I have been doing for a few batches now.  Same this time... I had an acid addition with 10 minutes left and then used the KC with 7 minutes left.

Gotchya...not sure why but reading through I thought I read you added the KC at 10 mins.

[Village Taphouse]

That's what I have been doing for a few batches now.  Same this time... I had an acid addition with 10 minutes left and then used the KC with 7 minutes left.

Gotchya...not sure why but reading through I thought I read you added the KC at 10 mins.

Probably my scrambled and unorganized posting style. 

I went back and found a couple of notes from when I used the KC in earlier batches and I noted that the wort was not as clear in the kettle as it went to the fermenter.  There were two batches with that note.  It appears that I used 5-6 of these tablets so I'm not sure what happened on the other ones.  But when I decided to just go back to a full-sized whirfloc tablet, the angels sung and the wort was ultra-clear.  I should also mention that I had a few batches in there where I cut a WF tablet in half (and also used some of the powder at the bottom of a container... turns out a WF tablet is about 2.3 to 2.4 grams so about 1.2g of the powder equates to half of a tablet) and those batches came out very clear as well.  I know that sounds like I'm dissing the Kick but I mentioned earlier that the evidence points to it. 

[Wilbur]

It might be the lower pH of your wort, if you look at the BSG manual lower pH wort will reduce the strength of whirlfloc faster (25% strength reduction at boiling in 10 minutes @ 4.5 pH vs 30 minutes @ 5 pH). The other thing to keep in mind is that after a certain threshold clarity doesn't improve, but the volume of sediment increases. Did you happen to note how much sediment was in the bottom between the 1/2 and full tablet batches? Either way, it sounds like whirlfloc is the way to go for you.

[Village Taphouse]

It might be the lower pH of your wort, if you look at the BSG manual lower pH wort will reduce the strength of whirlfloc faster (25% strength reduction at boiling in 10 minutes @ 4.5 pH vs 30 minutes @ 5 pH). The other thing to keep in mind is that after a certain threshold clarity doesn't improve, but the volume of sediment increases. Did you happen to note how much sediment was in the bottom between the 1/2 and full tablet batches? Either way, it sounds like whirlfloc is the way to go for you.

The pH of the wort would have been somewhere between 5.2 and 5.4.  Definitely not lower than 5.0.  I hear you on the volume of sediment.  It's one reason I tried the KC in the first place... less schputz in the kettle.  There DOES seem to be less schputz but that makes sense since the KC tablet appears to be half the size of the WF tablet.  I just wonder if my water/process/pH, etc. has some chemical makeup that makes it less compatible with whatever is in the KC tablet... making it less effective.  I just went down to my supply shelf and noticed that I have another 10-pack of KC tablets.   

[Village Taphouse]

Updating an older thread.  I was looking through my stuff on Saturday while brewing and I saw that I had one whirfloc tablet left.  As I searched further I found that I had 5 Kick tablets left.  As I got close to adding one or the other I decided to use Kick and as insurance I used two of the tablets.  The wort cleared nicely and looked beautiful going into the fermenter.  What this tells me (and what I have been trying to determine for a long time) is that some other factor is at play in my brewing that might cause the wort not to clear properly.  A water issue, a mash pH issue, a boil pH issue, a boil intensity issue, possibly a malt with high protein, etc.  In my original post I was wrong to blame the Kick for the wort not clearing.  These are areas where it's tough to troubleshoot things because I might conclude that all my WF batches clear and a Kick batch did not so it must be the Kick but then others might say "Kick works for me!" and then we're left shrugging and not knowing what it could be.  I mentioned a "simplification" that I made with the help of BrewBama and one of those steps is to just get the strike water to a pH of 5.5 prior to the mash and then let everything fall into place.  My guess is that these issues I had were due to a mash pH that was not in the preferred range.  My last 6-8 months of batches have all had good/better clarity except for one that I remember posting about. 

[Bob357]

Glad you figured it out. I'm just as guilty of blaming a product for flaws as anyone but have learned over time that the cause is almost always something else. After chasing my tail several times, I find it easier to diagnose before laying blame.