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Author Topic: Fined Beer not bright  (Read 6438 times)

Offline gordonstrong

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Re: Fined Beer not bright
« Reply #15 on: March 04, 2011, 09:16:15 am »
Did you get the expected extract from the grain?  Are there any other problems with it?  How old is it?  Like I said, I never did anything unusual to Crisp MO and it always drops bright.  Single infusion, no kettle finings, etc. 

Did you get a good break?  Did you add any calcium salts to the mash?  Did you check your mash pH?  (OK, I see it said 5.3, that's fine.)  How long did you mash?  I'm wondering if you have any unconverted starches in your beer that could be giving you a starch haze.

There are a lot of things that can cause haze.  It's hard to really fix the problem at the root without digging into the ingredients, process, and equipment to see what happened.  Everything we're talking about now is futzing with something that has already broken to try to make it better.  No problem with that, but I'm also concerned about you avoiding this next time.

Gelatin should work at cooler temperatures.  If you're concerned about it having precipitated out, just rouse the keg after you've kegged it and you're sure there's no oxygen in it.  Don't give it a ton of head pressure, just enough to keep the keg sealed.  Then chill it.

You can defer bottling until it's right.  If you have it in a keg, you can bottle using a beer gun after it's carbonated.  Or you can prime it and bottle condition it too.  Worse comes to worse, you can also filter it.

But the easiest thing right now is to hit it with some super-kleer and see what happens.  I've seen it give results in an hour or two; it's scary to watch it clear a mead before your eyes.  It works faster if it is also chilled but it can work at room temp.   
Gordon Strong • Beavercreek, Ohio • AHA Member since 1997 • Twitter: GordonStrong

Offline gimmeales

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Re: Fined Beer not bright
« Reply #16 on: March 04, 2011, 02:20:32 pm »
hmmm, thought I replied to this, but maybe forgot the 'post' button.

That sounds fascinating about the super-clear, Gordon will have to check it out just for experimentation's sake!  I DO have a free keg, I may just rack it to clear and bottle from there - was just trying to avoid an unnecessary transfer.

Clarity of my beers is usually what I expect based on yeast selection - my Bitters are bright, my Saisons are not.  Base malt usage for me is roughly 50\50 MO and Domestic 2-row, though this is my first sack of Maris Otter though.  The 100% MO IPA dropped bright, but that was after refrigeration and hitting it with gelatin - in primary it 'seemed' cloudier than even the use of US-05 would have produced, but can't be sure.  I'm thinking working my way through this sack will be the only way to really know.

Regarding this beer, extraction efficiency was 70%.  Single infusion at 156f for ~70 minutes.  Got good hot\cold break (same as a typical batch - maybe a little more protien clumps floating around).  I employed a small water adjustment with gypsum and baking soda based on the EZ Water Calculator, but even backed off those numbers a bit (don't have the spreadsheet in front of me).