I should preface this with: I'm going to be rather long winded here and there's a chance there's an existing thread that answers my question, but I haven't found it. The short version of my question is: should a cream ale end up cloudy like a hefe? So, if the answer exists out there, please point me in the right direction if possible. Otherwise, here goes the long version...
After a week in primary (bucket), I racked to secondary (glass carboy) only to find an extremely cloudy beer, even after sitting undisturbed for three days. I've kicked up sediment during racking before, but not like this. It's so cloudy, it looks like a Hefe. Even the mini-yeast cake (if that is even what it is) that usually settles after a day or two in secondary is there like normal. I roger up to the fact that I may just be impatient and everything will drop out over the next week and a half or so that I planned to wait until bottling. If that's the case, great. Otherwise, what else could have gone wrong?
What got me here:
I brewed a cream ale as a partial mash. The mash part was 3.5 lbs of 2-row pilsen and 1.5 lbs of flaked corn. I also had .25 lb of 20L crystal, but that shouldn't matter. About 1.4 qts/lb. I kept it between 150 and 154 for an hour. When I ran it off, it stuck bad. So bad that I ended up pouring everything into my spagetti pot, back into the mash tun. Same with the sparge. Sticky mess, but you get the picture. It was about 2.5 hours from the time strike water first hit until I started to bring it up to a boil. One other thing was out of the norm. I have always used RO water with about a Tbsp of "Brew Saltz" - whatever that happens to be - that the brew shop I go to gives out. This time, I must have lost it because I couldn't find it on brew day and was too impatient to drive back to the store. I still went with the RO water, though. Otherwise everything went as usual. I came close to my expected starting gravity. At racking, final gravity was about where I expected it. Oh yeah, it tastes just fine to me. If it's dinkable, I consider it a success, foggy beer doesn't bother me too much. I'm just curious because my previous batches were clear by this time and I'm trying for consistency.
For those of you who have stuck with me this long, I greatly appreciate it and whatever thoughts you may have would be wonderful. Thanks in advance.
And to answer they very first question: What was I thinking? The answer is that I thought it might be good to have a beer on hand that would be more of a crowd pleaser that you're able to drink a lot of in one sitting.
After a week in primary (bucket), I racked to secondary (glass carboy) only to find an extremely cloudy beer, even after sitting undisturbed for three days. I've kicked up sediment during racking before, but not like this. It's so cloudy, it looks like a Hefe. Even the mini-yeast cake (if that is even what it is) that usually settles after a day or two in secondary is there like normal. I roger up to the fact that I may just be impatient and everything will drop out over the next week and a half or so that I planned to wait until bottling. If that's the case, great. Otherwise, what else could have gone wrong?
What got me here:
I brewed a cream ale as a partial mash. The mash part was 3.5 lbs of 2-row pilsen and 1.5 lbs of flaked corn. I also had .25 lb of 20L crystal, but that shouldn't matter. About 1.4 qts/lb. I kept it between 150 and 154 for an hour. When I ran it off, it stuck bad. So bad that I ended up pouring everything into my spagetti pot, back into the mash tun. Same with the sparge. Sticky mess, but you get the picture. It was about 2.5 hours from the time strike water first hit until I started to bring it up to a boil. One other thing was out of the norm. I have always used RO water with about a Tbsp of "Brew Saltz" - whatever that happens to be - that the brew shop I go to gives out. This time, I must have lost it because I couldn't find it on brew day and was too impatient to drive back to the store. I still went with the RO water, though. Otherwise everything went as usual. I came close to my expected starting gravity. At racking, final gravity was about where I expected it. Oh yeah, it tastes just fine to me. If it's dinkable, I consider it a success, foggy beer doesn't bother me too much. I'm just curious because my previous batches were clear by this time and I'm trying for consistency.
For those of you who have stuck with me this long, I greatly appreciate it and whatever thoughts you may have would be wonderful. Thanks in advance.
And to answer they very first question: What was I thinking? The answer is that I thought it might be good to have a beer on hand that would be more of a crowd pleaser that you're able to drink a lot of in one sitting.
