cloudy beer help

due to how busy i have been lately, i just brewed my first beer in around 6 months. needless to say, i was a little bit rusty. i hit all my mash temps and everything seemed to go right on brew day. i was using my new rubbermaid 10 gallon MLT and was a little unfamiliar with it since i had been using the mesh grain bag AG technique before.

anyways, just tapped the keg and the beer is very cloudy. it tastes good; very very green, but good. the recipe was ed worts haus pale ale. i have brewed this before and it turned out perfectly. what is my problem here?

i am guessing that i didnt vorlauf long enough. is this the case?

In my experience, vorlaufing only catches the big chunks of grain and doesn't really matter in the final clarity of the beer.

A couple of things that can cause cloudy beer- chill haze, starch haze, suspended yeast particles and possibly lack of a hot break.

I use whirfloc in the boil kettle, and that helps with a lot with chill haze because it causes the proteins to coagulate and fall out. If it's chill haze, it'll get better in a couple of weeks at fridge temps. Same with a yeast haze- if it's yeast, it'll get better after being chilled for a while. If there are unconverted starces in the beer, you might have a starch haze. Did you test for conversion? Ingredients play a part, too- wheat beers tend to remain cloudy.

I assume you got a good hot break? If you never got much of a hot break, you could have some cloudy beer but I don't think that's very common.

thanks for the quick response.

i should also mention i did a cool crash for three days after a 10 day primary. that should have cleared up the yeast haze. i was very careful when transferring to the keg and didnt get any of the yeast cake into the keg. so i dont think its yeast.

since i was so rusty i forgot to take gravity readings. i am guessing it might be unconverted starches. but its weird because i hit my mash temps and the beer doesnt really have a overly starchy taste. and i am familiar with overly starchy beer because i completely missed my mash on my last beer and blew it. it came out a low in alcohol, very cloudy mess.

also - i pitched at 78 degrees because i couldnt get it any colder with the immersion chiller. would this have anything to do with it?

bakersbrew said:

also - i pitched at 78 degrees because i couldnt get it any colder with the immersion chiller. would this have anything to do with it?

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Probably not with the cloudiness- that would be more of a flavor issue.

bakersbrew said:

thanks for the quick response.

i should also mention i did a cool crash for three days after a 10 day primary. that should have cleared up the yeast haze. i was very careful when transferring to the keg and didnt get any of the yeast cake into the keg. so i dont think its yeast.

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Can we assume that this is not 13 day old beer you're drinking?

I've started skipping the secondary and going straight to the keg myself but I usually leave the beer in the primary about 4 weeks. Now don't take that as gospel because like I said, I just started skipping the secondary. Still, 13 days and then into the keg seems a little short to me, even with the cold crash.

its actually been three weeks. i know that is a little soon and i should give it some time. i just wanted to try it out because i am impatient.

Well if you cooled your keg to carbonate it you'll slow down your aging. In the end you'll wind up waiting even longer if you wait until it's ready.

I stopped using anything to clear my beer. I just get a good boil, a good cold break and a long primary in cool conditions. (My basement is ideal year round) I usually age my beer 2 -3 months before drinking and that helps too. Of course I'm behind right now and I'll be drinking 5 week old beer in about four weeks so I might be eating those words. Anyway, the point is that you should build a pipeline if you can and let everything settle out over time.