After having created some ugly beer, and my friend doing the same I had to find out why. We used the same tun, mine, so I figured that was the issue. I thought my SS braid was not filtering properly and was considering a change to a manifold but wanted to give it one more go. Efficiency was great (consistently about 84%) , but clarity sucked. I tried to solve the issue Friday night...
So I did the runnings extermely slow and actually recirculated about 6 times. It never cleared as I was told it should. You should be able to read through it. Finally I gave up and was just going to collect the runnings and begin my boil. It dawned on me suddenly that I was probably not collecting enough of the runnings to allow the grain bed to set.
I ran off 2 gallons and voila, crystal clear runnings!!!
So I wanted to share this information that is probably well known to everyone else. I had read thoroughly how to do all grain and most readings stated to run off a couple gallons to set the grain bed and it would filter properly...however I do not recall anything saying that you must run this 2 gallons off all at once. Here I was, using a 1/2 gallon pitcher to collect runnings (1/2*6 equal 3 gallons run off in my mind!)and it was never letting the bed set.
I probably just misinterpretted things when reading, but in case there are others out there that have cloudy, unclear beer. It makes perfect sense to me at this point why my beer wasn't clear. Perhaps this can be an issue associated with your clarity, and maybe I can save you some frustration.
Cheers! Hope this helps someone!
So I did the runnings extermely slow and actually recirculated about 6 times. It never cleared as I was told it should. You should be able to read through it. Finally I gave up and was just going to collect the runnings and begin my boil. It dawned on me suddenly that I was probably not collecting enough of the runnings to allow the grain bed to set.
I ran off 2 gallons and voila, crystal clear runnings!!!
So I wanted to share this information that is probably well known to everyone else. I had read thoroughly how to do all grain and most readings stated to run off a couple gallons to set the grain bed and it would filter properly...however I do not recall anything saying that you must run this 2 gallons off all at once. Here I was, using a 1/2 gallon pitcher to collect runnings (1/2*6 equal 3 gallons run off in my mind!)and it was never letting the bed set.
I probably just misinterpretted things when reading, but in case there are others out there that have cloudy, unclear beer. It makes perfect sense to me at this point why my beer wasn't clear. Perhaps this can be an issue associated with your clarity, and maybe I can save you some frustration.
Cheers! Hope this helps someone!