My first career brew is Irish Red Ale and it's ready to drink. My wife and I were really impressed with the taste and cleanness of the beer. We both feel it was a bit cloudy though. Any reasons for cloudy? Any ways to fix or prevent cloudy beer?
Chilling the hot wort is probably the biggest opportunity to clear up beer.
I use sanitary ice cubes to top up and cool the wort and my beer is super clear..(except my wheat beer )
A wort chiller or ice are great time savers and reduce risk of conrtamination in addition to clearing beer.
I have a question about chilling wort. I use a wort chiller and get down to pitching temps quickly. When I get close to the right temp I pour through a strainer into my fermentation bucket. Is that the wrong thing to do? I mean, if I am chilling my wort to get the solids to fall to the bottom, am I undoing all that good work by pouring everything into my fermentation bucket?
Cheers, Max
EDIT : found my answer.
eppo said:For most, Just let it sit for a few weeks, it will most likely taste even better, and should be clearer.
what kind of fining you use is dependent on what is causing the haze. when the beer warms up, does it clear up?
You can try using either Irish moss or Whirfloc tablets in the boil at the last 15 minutes. These are fining agents that help the proteins coagulate and drop out of suspension when cooling.
In addition, how long was the beer in the primary or secondary. If the beer is left long enough, most of the trub should settle out nicely. In addition you need to be careful when racking to be sure you are not disturbing the trub layer and stirring things up. You can also use a hop bag over your racking cane to act as a filter when transferring to the bottling bucket.
Cheers and congrats on the first beer!
cheezydemon3 said:I would strain the wort through the grain bag to rinse, or Vorlauf, if you will.
Ideally the still hot wort could be passed back between 2 vessels, transferring maybe a colander or strainer with the grain bag in it.
I do NOT use a bag, but I dump the grains into a large strainer that I suspend over an empty pot, I then dump the wort back and forth until there is little to no sediment. this is before chilling and only takes 5 minutes or so.
I just want to point out that BIB may let some small particles through that I am actually filtering or vorlaufing out.
I don't filter out the Hop bits after boil.
NFamato said:I can't say the beer is clearer when it warms up because I haven't tried that, but what i do notice is the beer seems much clearer in the bottle before refrigerating.
When you guys say chill the wort down to 70 - 80 degrees after the boil, how quickly are we talking about? How many minutes?
Yea don't do this with hot wort. You will oxidize it vs at cooler temps you will oxygenate it. Yes they are a different process. Just pour through a sanitized grain or hops bag after the wort is cool.
HB is typically cloudy. There are things you can do to clear it up like adding Irish Moss or finings. People use other methods like racking to a secondary or cold crashing. Other people enjoy their HB being a little cloudy. It's a matter of personal taste.
tonyc318 said:I add no finings to my kettle. I leave it in the primary close to 3 weeks usually. I let it sit in the fridge for several days before I open it, and I have clear beer.
Do a search for chill haze. That's what you are dealing with. The easy option is give it a couple extra weeks in the fridge and it will clear on its own (in most cases).
Typical cause is not cooling the wort fast enough after the boil.
NFamato said:What beer is in the picture? Nice clarity.
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