Hey all, so this morning I had a brief conversation with a fellow HBTer in the IRC chat about beer clarity and things that do/don't influence it. He was suggesting using a longer boil (90 min vs 60 min) will do more for beer clarity than a fast cold crash. He stated that sources he'd read (including a reference made by Palmer on a brewing podcast) said that cooling time has little to do with clarity.
I have to disagree based my initial scientific reasoning on the subject. I find it hard to believe that boiling for an extra 30 mins, after having already done so for 60 mins, would yield a significant increase in denatured proteins in the wort. Now I haven't done any experimentation on the subject nor have I [yet] done any reading specifically about it, so I'm open to different opinion and interpretations.
My concept of clarifying the wort through quickly cooling it is that the proteins begin to re-nature and end up bonding to each other at times by accident as the refold, causing them to coagulate and eventually fall out of solution. If you're cooling quickly, this would obviously be happening with more proteins at one time as each hits their temp threshold. Some (or most?) will also not be able to properly refold at all, regardless of conditions, which would aid coagulation of the proteins as the temp cools.
I'm at work right now, but I was going to look up some papers tonight to see if I could support or disprove my theory... Discuss!
I have to disagree based my initial scientific reasoning on the subject. I find it hard to believe that boiling for an extra 30 mins, after having already done so for 60 mins, would yield a significant increase in denatured proteins in the wort. Now I haven't done any experimentation on the subject nor have I [yet] done any reading specifically about it, so I'm open to different opinion and interpretations.
My concept of clarifying the wort through quickly cooling it is that the proteins begin to re-nature and end up bonding to each other at times by accident as the refold, causing them to coagulate and eventually fall out of solution. If you're cooling quickly, this would obviously be happening with more proteins at one time as each hits their temp threshold. Some (or most?) will also not be able to properly refold at all, regardless of conditions, which would aid coagulation of the proteins as the temp cools.
I'm at work right now, but I was going to look up some papers tonight to see if I could support or disprove my theory... Discuss!