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Cloudy Beer
Hi All,
I am very new to kegging (2 times)and both brews are tasting great but they are both cloudy. I am not sure why this is happening. I have the kegging kit from MW and I think I am doing everything right. Does anybody have any idea on why the beer isn't clear. Currently one was carbonated at 12psi and one at 11psi and both are served at the same pressure. The whole setup is in a 42 degree chest freezer.
Thanks,
Matt
The best thing I have found for improving clarity is time and cold temps. Give it some time at cold temps (50-35) and this wil drop a lot of the heavy particulates out of suspension and help clear the beer.
The first thing to test for and look at is chill haze.
Pour a draft and let the glass warm up to room temperature overnight. Check to see if the beer is clear the next morning. That means you have chill haze, too much disolved protein in the beer that changes its molecular shape slighly when its cold to give a cloudy appearence.
A longer sit at the colder temps will take care of it if you have patience. If you keep drinking from the kegs at a rate of 1-2 beers per day, you'll find that the beer is clear for the last couple pints because it was settling out the whole time.
The other solution to chill haze is a longer boil and more vigourous (I boil all my beer for 90min) and you need to focus on a get cold break. So examine your chilling routine. All my beers get cloudy in the summer time because of warmer chiller water than in winter. I don't fret to much about it, but inorder to really get a good cold break you need to coldest chiller you can get, so use a prechiller on the tap water line if possible.
How do you keep the precipitated proteins and stuff out of the fermenter? I get a lot of chill haze in all seasons, and I suspect that the kitchen strainer is not adequate for keeping trub like cold break out of the fermenter, which might lead to chill haze? Then again, I only boil for 65 minutes or so... just enough to let the foam settle before my 60-minute bittering hop addition.
And would more fining, like gelatin or isinglass help with kegging haze? I still bottle, so this is just a guess and mostly out of curiosity.
ksbrainard wrote:
How do you keep the precipitated proteins and stuff out of the fermenter? I get a lot of chill haze in all seasons, and I suspect that the kitchen strainer is not adequate for keeping trub like cold break out of the fermenter, which might lead to chill haze? Then again, I only boil for 65 minutes or so... just enough to let the foam settle before my 60-minute bittering hop addition.
And would more fining, like gelatin or isinglass help with kegging haze? I still bottle, so this is just a guess and mostly out of curiosity.
After the chill is done I use my sanitized brew spoon to get a good whirlpool going. Then I cover the pot and let it sit for another 30 minutes. That helps bring everything into the center of the kettle and stuff settle into a cone in the bottom. I used to then siphon from the side of the kettle. I have a valve on my kettle now that is rigged up with a copper T fitting that allows me to draw from the edges of the "cone".
I admit though that it isn't perfect, I still get plenty of hop debris and stuff in the fermentor.
I also brew about 1.5 gallons more than I need. SO for 5.5 gallons in the fermentor I actually brew a batch size of 7 gallons, knowing that I'll leave behind about 1.5 gallons with all the trub and hop debris.
If you achieve a really great cold break that stuff will settle out in the fermentor and keg leaving you with clear beer. It just takes a little more patience.
lastly, I would ike to invest in a plate chiller, but until I master the seperation of wort from trub and break I am afraid I won't get the plate chiller clean enough each time.
Maybe Thirsty (who uses a plate chiller) can chime in here about how he keeps the junk out.
as long as you flush the plate chiller before it dries out there is no problem at all with debris in there. The only addition I dounf nessessary is to use hop bags if using pellets... not needed with whole leaf hops.
I run basically a homeade bazooka screen straight from the middle bottom into the plate chiller and have never had an issue.
brewchez wrote:
[I used to then siphon from the side of the kettle. I have a valve on my kettle now that is rigged up with a copper T fitting that allows me to draw from the edges of the "cone".
I admit though that it isn't perfect, I still get plenty of hop debris and stuff in the fermentor.
Have you looked into a diverter plate at all to keep the trub caone undisturbed from the pickup?
I now use the hopstopper and it keeps so much out of the chiller, I am now only leaving less than a half gallon behind (plus whatever is absorbed).
Like bill says, a good back flush keeps the plate clean, my hose has a male QD on it, so I just plug the hose into the "wort out" of the chillplate and blast everything out, then connect to the QD for the "wort in" and blast it the other direction- done and clean. (I boil it after each use too just to be safe).
With the warmer weather it does take a little longer to chill, I have a thrumometer in-line right before the fermenter, so I have to slow the flow rate down a tad to maintain 68 deg, but even on friday it was 90 deg outside, and I filled 2 carboys in under 20 minutes.
gismcieri wrote:
Hi All,
I am very new to kegging (2 times)and both brews are tasting great but they are both cloudy. I am not sure why this is happening. I have the kegging kit from MW and I think I am doing everything right. Does anybody have any idea on why the beer isn't clear. Currently one was carbonated at 12psi and one at 11psi and both are served at the same pressure. The whole setup is in a 42 degree chest freezer.
Thanks,
Matt
The flocculation of the yeast can also make a difference. For instance a non-flocculant yeast strain - like I typically use - will be more cloudy then one that has a rated flocculation.
thirsty wrote:
brewchez wrote:
[I used to then siphon from the side of the kettle. I have a valve on my kettle now that is rigged up with a copper T fitting that allows me to draw from the edges of the "cone".
I admit though that it isn't perfect, I still get plenty of hop debris and stuff in the fermentor.Have you looked into a diverter plate at all to keep the trub caone undisturbed from the pickup?
I now use the hopstopper and it keeps so much out of the chiller, I am now only leaving less than a half gallon behind (plus whatever is absorbed).
Like bill says, a good back flush keeps the plate clean, my hose has a male QD on it, so I just plug the hose into the "wort out" of the chillplate and blast everything out, then connect to the QD for the "wort in" and blast it the other direction- done and clean. (I boil it after each use too just to be safe).
With the warmer weather it does take a little longer to chill, I have a thrumometer in-line right before the fermenter, so I have to slow the flow rate down a tad to maintain 68 deg, but even on friday it was 90 deg outside, and I filled 2 carboys in under 20 minutes.
With the warmer weather what would prechilling the whole unit in a ice bucket do for you??? Hook up all your hoses to the chiller and then get it good and cold? DO you think the thermal shock would crack it somewhere?
With the hop stopper, are you using pellets?
brewchez wrote:
[With the warmer weather what would prechilling the whole unit in a ice bucket do for you??? Hook up all your hoses to the chiller and then get it good and cold? DO you think the thermal shock would crack it somewhere?
With the hop stopper, are you using pellets?
That is the beauty of this hopstopper- I use pellets and leaf, whatever I can get in each variety. Works unbelievable. I've had 8 oz of pellet and 4 oz of leaf in one boil, and it filtered great, just left behind a huge cake of green mess.
The individual plates in the chiller are so conductive, I think that a pre-freeze would work for only a couple seconds. I thought about hooking up the HERMS coil in a cooler ice bath and pass the chill water through that, but after all that work, it will probably only get me to increase the flow enough to save me 5-10 minutes, not quite sure if it is even worth it.
thirsty wrote:
The individual plates in the chiller are so conductive, I think that a pre-freeze would work for only a couple seconds. I thought about hooking up the HERMS coil in a cooler ice bath and pass the chill water through that, but after all that work, it will probably only get me to increase the flow enough to save me 5-10 minutes, not quite sure if it is even worth it.
What I mean is to dunk the whole thing in a bucket of ice and water let it chill down, and leave it in there for the chill. I would think that there would be enough thermal mass in the chiller and that it would be conductive enough to exchage heat into the chiller water but also through the body of the chiller into the ice water bucket as well.
brewchez wrote:
thirsty wrote:
The individual plates in the chiller are so conductive, I think that a pre-freeze would work for only a couple seconds. I thought about hooking up the HERMS coil in a cooler ice bath and pass the chill water through that, but after all that work, it will probably only get me to increase the flow enough to save me 5-10 minutes, not quite sure if it is even worth it.
What I mean is to dunk the whole thing in a bucket of ice and water let it chill down, and leave it in there for the chill. I would think that there would be enough thermal mass in the chiller and that it would be conductive enough to exchage heat into the chiller water but also through the body of the chiller into the ice water bucket as well.
Well that just makes a lot more sense. Guess I am brain dead today, I may need pictures of this crazy plan you speak of- perhaps some scematics? LOL yeah I bet that would work, luckily I am brewing tomorrow, maybe give that a whirl, (guess I can cancel my glycol chiller on layaway at B3!)
thirsty wrote:
Well that just makes a lot more sense. Guess I am brain dead today, I may need pictures of this crazy plan you speak of- perhaps some scematics? LOL yeah I bet that would work, luckily I am brewing tomorrow, maybe give that a whirl, (guess I can cancel my glycol chiller on layaway at B3!)
If I wasn't going to a BBQ on Friday I'd have to come out there and test it myself.
Good luck.
brewchez wrote:
[If I wasn't going to a BBQ on Friday I'd have to come out there and test it myself.
Good luck.
Ahh, you're a day late Mike! (always welcome to come out and brew) Cause not only did we brew a India Brown Ale, but BBQ'd a boston butt for pulled pork samiches. Hit 195 deg at 6:30am, (put on the smoker the night before) and pulled about 7#. put half aside for dry sandwiches, and put the other half in a crockpot w/ BBQ sauce and a belgian abbey ale for a few hours, holy crap was that good.
So What did you BBQ?
Got a great score too, a buddy of mine is a pro plumber, he is talking about running water lines out to my garage, and he gave me this water filtration kit he did as a removal from some bigshot's house, said it is abiut a $600 setup- that will be a nice addition- no RO for me!
Water filters:
Brewday pics:
I couldn't do the submerge chiller trick because the line from the pump to the chiller is too short, so I wouldn't of had enough room. So ironically, the heat of the exchange water blew apart my hose halfway through, and electrical tape did nothing.
You had asked earlier about how the hopstopper works with pellets, this is the final kettle loss after 7oz of pellets, I scraped the top a bit to show how deep the cake of sludge gets:
And this is a shot of the plate chiller getting its backflush, I run it through the "wort out" port first, then reconnect to the "wort in" port, and it blows evrything right out, but the hopstopper really keeps most out anyhow.
I am extremely jealous of your entire post.
Smoked Pork for REAL BBQ (seems that we share another passion)
Water filtration system (I will need to get that going after after I move to my new place, the water there sucks)
Hop stopper (Once I saw the pics I remembered you posting about it earlier, I need to rig something up like that too).
Busted hose.... well that doesn't make me jealous.
I love BBQ so I didn't mean to mis speak the other day. I went to a friends place for a cookout. I apologize to all tbe BBQ lovers out there that recognize BBQ as a technique and not an event or a thing (or even worse... just a sauce).
We had the standard chicken and tips and grilled corn yesterday.
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