Clarify Agents - Help

I've got a helles lager ready to keg and I would like to clear it up a bit, since I noticed some chill haze during the lagering. I have some polyclar and also a pouch of super-kleer k.c.(kieselsol/chitosan). Is it ok to add while the beer is at 40F? Which would work better at this temperature?

On another note, I just threw out about 200 bottles, KEGGING IS AWESOME!

Thanks

Matt

...and I'm driving through Atlanta in a couple of weeks. I would have taken them off of your hands...

I had no plans to come your way, but I still would have taken them off your hands! 200 bottles, you say?

I doubt if polyclar will help if you lagered long enough at cold temps. It won't hurt to try but I might suggest using geletin. Just follow the directions for rehydrating it.

I've started using whirlfloc in the last 15 minutes of the boil. Not only does it do something that makes the cold break very dramatic but it results in crystal clear beer.

I used Whirfloc on the batch, but....

Somewhere on this forum I read that Whirfloc tablets are made for much larger batch size than 5g, so i cut the tablet in half. The beer is perfectly clear at 60f, but in the cooler it's slightly hazy. I noticed this on my last helles, and after a few weeks in the keg it cleared up. My problem is i'm serving this beer at my company's investor meeting this saturday, and a clear beer would be great.

BTW, I kept some of my bottles (flip-tops and special bottles).

Matt

I might be wrong, but don't fining agents like gelatin settle out protein, and isn't chill haze caused by starch?
If I'm right, adding finings won't help.

I was talking with a guy here at work who also makes beer and wine. He mentions that his wine kits come with wine clarifiers....couldn't you just use that...

Or....you could use Alum....it's used to floc out solids in water treatment plants.....just don't add to much!!!

I believe the general consensus is that you should use whirlfloc tabs or irish moss in the boil to precipitate a good cold break and, perhaps, reduce the liklihood of chillhaze. Obviously, once you realize you've got chill haze then the irish moss won't help.. here's what you need to do:

get some polyclar, mix it in some boiling water, chill your beer till it's nice and hazy, and add the polyclar solution.. you don't need to shake or stir.

FYI, chillhaze results from excessive amounts of protein and tannins in the beer. The proteins and tannins bind to each other to form long chains that are visible to the naked eye - this is chill haze.

Here's a nice article in BYO explaining the use of various finnings (including irish moss/whirlfloc and polyclar). It's also a good read on chill haze. HTH..

http://byo.com/feature/508.html

I didn't know this but, evidently, irish moss really only works for the AG brewer... at least according to this article. Too bad I never tried the stuff before I went AG.. would've been interesting to see if it had the same effect.

Try some sparkalloid. Boil for 3 minutes the add to carboy. I would suggest adding a negative charged fining like Kiesosol or bentonite or whatever to help the sparkalloid to fall out faster, but I added mine to the carboy and chilled it in the fridge. It dropped out in 2 days. I had a haze problem casued by sparging to hot. I was getting lazy and when brewing outside in the cold it's hard not to get a little lasy sometimes and wasn't paying attention to sparge temp, letting it boil and adding it to the mashtun (batch sparging).

Anyway, it worked wonders at pulling out the haze.

I'm going to be getting some finings from the brewery I work at part time. I can't rememeber the name of the stuff but it pulls out protein (neg charged fining) like crazy. 50 grams is good for a hetoliter so you don't need much. It's a polyethel something. Not PVPP (polycar).

Stabifix and other silica hydrogels are used to pull out small chill haze sized proteins. I was given some by a local brewery where I work on occasion. Works great put is best filtered since it stays in suspenion for quite some time. Adding some gelatin or other coagolating negitve fining should pull it out faster though.