flakes in final beer

Quick question...

Just had a couple beers out of my first AG keg. Taste is very good, but I'm noticing some obviously visible flakes in the beer. You can't make them out on the tongue, but they're definitely visible in the glass. I'd say they're almost like what the gold in goldschlager(sp?) is like, although not as many.

I'm wondering what caused it...

I did a single mash followed by a vorlauf and then put the mash water in the brew pot. Next I batch sparged and forgot to vorlauf before filling the brew pot with the sparge water. I know that won't help, but would that alone cause it?

I only have a 5g pot, so I've been doing 4.5g all-grain brews. I've noticed on both batches (second AG is in primary), about 50% of the brew pot after immersion cooling is sludge. I wouldn't care if it was only like 10% of the total volume, but we're talking a good 1.5g+ of my already downsized brew (I only have about 3.5g left after brewing). So, when I poured it in the primary, I poured in about 90% of the "sludge" as well. Could this be the cause?

Do most people put all of that "sludge" in the primary, or do you take that into account in your calculations?

TIA!

I try to keep most of the hops and trub. Out of the fermenter. I normally try to get 5.5gal in the primary.

Usually the first few beers out of a fresh keg will have floaties for me. Also I've found that if you force carbed at a higher pressure and just released and reset the pressure lower, it tends to stir up all the junk and pull floaties for a while until it all settles.

I put it all into primary because I don't have a ball valve or anything on my kettle so i just dump it in and rack off the top when I go into the keg. I compensate by shooting for 5.5gallons into the fermenter which usually leaves about 5 in the keg.

Hmm...have definitely used the keg a 3-4 times before with extracts and never noticed flakes.

Is my 1.5g hop/trub loss, and 1g evaporation loss high?

I never use a lid at all, as I'm too afraid of the boil-over. Would putting the lid on 3/4 of the way would help with the evaporation loss?

Anything that can help with hop/trub loss? Maybe waiting longer after everything is cooled before putting it in the fermenter? Would that hurt anything if I already have it at ~75 degrees?

You don't want to use the lid evaporation is important to prevent DMS

Sounds normal to me, but like the above post said, don't put a lid on the boil, dms precursors evaporate out with the boil, add some hop pellets to water and see how much they expand! Its amazing, u can lose a lot to hops and trub

Honestly it sounds like cold break. Do you chill the work in the kettle ? Also you can use your racking can too keep the trub out of your fermenter.

crazyirishman34 said:

Honestly it sounds like cold break. Do you chill the work in the kettle ? Also you can use your racking can too keep the trub out of your fermenter.

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I do the last 10 min of the boil with my immersion cooler in the brew pot to sanitize. Right when I turn off the flame, I turn the water on to the immersion cooler. In the winter, it cools To under 85 in ~15min or so. Would that be a factor?

Never thought of using the racking cane for going from the brew pot to he fermenter instead of pouring. I'll give that a try next time if I haven't already bought the 10g megapot I'm still trying to convince myself to get. I'd really rather the 15g, as I can definitely picture myself going to 10g batches, but the 15g is about 1/4" too high to fit on my stove under my microwave.

chuckda4th said:

I do the last 10 min of the boil with my immersion cooler in the brew pot to sanitize. Right when I turn off the flame, I turn the water on to the immersion cooler. In the winter, it cools To under 85 in ~15min or so. Would that be a factor?

Never thought of using the racking cane for going from the brew pot to he fermenter instead of pouring. I'll give that a try next time if I haven't already bought the 10g megapot I'm still trying to convince myself to get. I'd really rather the 15g, as I can definitely picture myself going to 10g batches, but the 15g is about 1/4" too high to fit on my stove under my microwave.

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Be careful I burnt up my stove with a 15 gal pot and forever banish to brew outside by the SWMBO!

Hey chuckda4th, what you might want to consider is getting enough grain to make 6 gallon batches and use whirlfloc tablets which will help the hot break drop out better. Then rack the beer into your fermentor and leave the last 1/2 gallon or so that has the hot break in the kettle. This will give you 5.5 gallons in the fermentor, so when you rack to the keg you can also leave behind the last 1/2 gallon with the trub again. You'll get 5 gallons of good clean beer into your keg this way. Just scale your recipes up from 5 gal to 6 gal...

What about doing a partial mash batch? Also are you using a lot of under modified malts like German pilsner. If you don't do a protein rest you will get a ton of trub. A 30 minute rest at 122F will take care of that.

Actually...the issue has gone away. Took ~5 full beers, but everything I pour from the keg now is perfectly clear. Guess it wasn't 100% settled before I racked it to the keg. Oh well.

Thanks for the input!