My Irish Red is dark and cloudy but tastes great - what is wrong? Do I toss it?

[Paul S]

My first post here - been brewing for about 6 years, but still consider myself a beginner - soooo much to learn. Anyway, this is the 4th time I have made this recipe and it usually comes out nice and bright, but this time , arghh, not so good. Tastes great - even better if I close my eyes. All grain as follows for 5.5 gallon batch:

10 lbs Maris Otter
13 oz Flaked Barley
13oz Caramel malt
4 oz chocolate malt
2oz east Kent Goldings
1 package Wyeast labs #1084, Irish Ale yeast.

It was cloudy during fermentation, and cloudy during 48hr cold crash. After kegging and carbonating, I waited about 4 days, then added gelatin to the keg and waited another 3 days - no change whatsoever. Got a big brew party coming up in 6 days and planning to toss it, as it is so un-appetizing to look at

Anyone have any ideas on how to salvage this, other than to pour in into opaque cups? What kills me is this is the best tasking one I have ever made, since I used closed transfers and eliminated my dreaded oxidation problems.

Thanks,
Paul

 

[GoeHaarden]

My first post here - been brewing for about 6 years, but still consider myself a beginner - soooo much to learn. Anyway, this is the 4th time I have made this recipe and it usually comes out nice and bright, but this time , arghh, not so good. Tastes great - even better if I close my eyes. All grain as follows for 5.5 gallon batch:

10 lbs Maris Otter
13 oz Flaked Barley
13oz Caramel malt
4 oz chocolate malt
2oz east Kent Goldings
1 package Wyeast labs #1084, Irish Ale yeast.

It was cloudy during fermentation, and cloudy during 48hr cold crash. After kegging and carbonating, I waited about 4 days, then added gelatin to the keg and waited another 3 days - no change whatsoever. Got a big brew party coming up in 6 days and planning to toss it, as it is so un-appetizing to look at

Anyone have any ideas on how to salvage this, other than to pour in into opaque cups? What kills me is this is the best tasking one I have ever made, since I used closed transfers and eliminated my dreaded oxidation problems.

Thanks,
Paul

Looks aren't everything...

I bet in 6 days at cold crash temps it'll be fine - if you dont move the keg. Time and cold will solve this. I cold crash my beers for a week usually before even transferring to a serving keg anyways.

All else fails...red solo cups

 

[Sammy86]

If it tastes good why would you throw it away? Makes no sense…who cares what it looks like?

Beer may be about tantalizing the senses but you’re drinking it, not staring at it for enjoyment.

 

[Yesfan]

If it tastes great, then looks be damned. I surely wouldn't toss it after all that effort.

 

[GoodTruble]

Just call it a "hazy red ale." I brewed a red ale last year that turned out darker (and stronger) than I expected. So I called it "imperial red ale."

But don't dump a good tasting beer.

One of my favorite homebrew metaphors is that homebrew is like homemade pie. Store bought pies always look perfect and consistently taste good/the same. Homemade pie often looks less perfect and can be less consistent, but it often tastes better and has a quality you can't replicate with store bought pie.

And as others said, it will probably get clear the longer in lagers.

 

[Cat Noodle]

Tastes great- drink it!

 

[leedspointbrew]

I had a similar experience with an Irish red I brewed - very tasty, but very cloudy. Similar recipe to yours, except I used S-04. I might have to crack a bottle of it later......

 

[hotbeer]

Wait and hope. Time usually clears up all my beers that are supposed to not have any yeast, trub or other stuff in suspension. Don't know how it'll work since you already added gelatin. But maybe time will still do for you the same thing it does for me without gelatin or cold crashing.

 

[GoodTruble]

Biofine Clear also works. But you would probably need to do another transfer, and I doubt it would be worth it at this point.

 

[TheBluePhantom]

Turn down the lights, and serve it in black mugs. Or have a blacklight party.... As I keep telling my wife, looks aren't everything....

And the best beer I ever made took months to clear. Went down to dump it, and decided to give it try anyway. Turns out it had finally cleared, and i fell instantly in love with it. I haven't been able to duiplicate it since. I think I got messed up grains, and got the hops backwards. All I know is I had a grainy, spicy lager with a PERFECT finish. And I just dropped $200 for a new fermentor for the next try. Duplicating that beer is on my bucket list,

 

[Bramling Cross]

It sounds like you have your fundamentals down, so what's your water source and do you monitor your mash, pre-boil, and pitching pH numbers?

As a guy that has been brewing with tap water for about thirty years, sometimes your water will throw you a curve ball in the Spring or Fall and you'll lose (or gain) a bunch of calcium while your municipal source is making its seasonal change, the result being flabby, cloudy beer--or really stark beer.

If you're using tap, I'd mark the date on your calendar and whether or not it's a drought year and learn from it.

That said, your grist looks like it's pretty resilient to the worst that city water can throw at it (lots of C-malt and a solid dose of chocolate--that should get your pH down) but if you live in an area that already has pretty chunky water...yeah, I can see how that could come out with a perma-haze.

I could be wrong, but whenever I think of a beer with a perma-haze, I always think that the pH is at fault. Fixing that got me clear beer.

 

[madscientist451]

Yeah, you‘re on the right track, dump it even if it tastes good, it’s your beer and you should do what you think is best. Meanwhile, keep brewing!

 

[Miraculix]

Embrace the Murky Irishman!

Throwing away a good beer just because it is not perfectly clear would be really really stupid.

 

[hottpeper13]

Once I started using calcium in the mash at ~100 ppm's my beers get clear after 2-4 weeks lagering.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

I drink my mistakes, so it motivates me to not make that mistake again. Of course, this only works if I know what I did wrong. If I don’t know what I did wrong, I drink it anyway and hope that I learn to like it.

 

[beren]

Just FYI, Irish red isn’t supposed to be really red. It’s mostly American marketing. Hell, American marketing created the term. Irish red ale - Wikipedia

 

[Jeroen79]

I rather have a cloudy beer than a beer with gelatin or other stuff added, if coldcrash doesn't clear it and it taste ok just drink it blindfold

 

[Miraculix]

I drink my mistakes, so it motivates me to not make that mistake again. Of course, this only works if I know what I did wrong. If I don’t know what I did wrong, I drink it anyway and hope that I learn to like it.

If it tastes like crap, I'd dump the beer without a single regret. I've just done so with an infected lager yesterday to free some bottles for the cream ale I've bottled afterwards. But as long as it tastes like it should, I wouldn't dump it.

 

[camonick]

If it tastes like crap, I'd dump the beer without a single regret. I've just done so with an infected lager yesterday to free some bottles for the cream ale I've bottled afterwards. But as long as it tastes like it should, I wouldn't dump it.

Life’s too short to drink bad beer.

 

[beren]

Life’s too short to drink bad beer.

Ugly beer is fine. Put it in a Stein and don’t look.

 

[hotbeer]

OP did state that it taste great. But looks bad!

I'm thinking there's a crude adolescent joke buried in that somewhere.

 

[beren]

OP did state that it taste great. But looks bad!

I'm thinking there's a crude adolescent joke buried in that somewhere.

Turn the lights out then it tastes and looks great!

 

[Broken Crow]

Hey @Paul S ...Welcome to HBT!.... Sorry to be a late response, but please come back and let us know any course of action you've taken. Personally, I Love me a good Irish Red and if the cloudiness really bothers you, you can always use it as an excuse to gain personal experience filtering. I tried it early on just because I want to try pretty much everything so I can make my own informed selections in the whole process and though I don't usually bother filtering, I do have the gear and if I were in your position I'd put it use in this instance. Here's a video that I pretty much followed:
Like others have said above though; If it's good just don't look at it....But if it really really bugs you; try a filter.

 

[day_trippr]

^Bomba de oxígeno^

 

[doug293cz]

^Bomba de oxígeno^

Purge the filter of O2 using CO2.

Brew on

 

[day_trippr]

As used in the video there's a lot more gear involved than just the filter that all has to be purged somehow.
I just don't see it being worth the potential damage just to brighten a beer quicker than it'll go bright on its own...

Cheers!

 

[doug293cz]

As used in the video there's a lot more gear involved than just the filter that all has to be purged somehow.
I just don't see it being worth the potential damage just to brighten a beer quicker than it'll go bright on its own...

Cheers!

I didn't say it was worth it...

Brew on

 

[Broken Crow]

Yeah..Sorry about that I haven't watched the video in ages and I'd forgotten it was an open and sloshy transfer, my bad. I should have just posted this for an example:
https://www.morebeer.com/products/beer-filter-kit-10-canister.htmlI had a brew of my own that wouldn't clear so about a week or so beyond when I had expected it finished, I ordered a filter and put ball-lock disconnects on it, sanitized and purged it along with the keg and tried it out. While it did yield a clear beer, it was something of a PITA to set up and clean and I wasn't happy with the additional line-losses and excess of CO2 required. I only used it on one more brew since and decided that it isn't worth it, but I keep it in my cupboard in the event I ever find some 'need' for it. It was a learning experience, so no real regrets, but Thanks for pointing out my poor choice of filtering example...dunno why it was still in my bookmarks but it's deleted now.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

OP did state that it taste great. But looks bad!

I'm thinking there's a crude adolescent joke buried in that somewhere.

By closing time, it will rate a “10”!

 

[Paul S]

Looks aren't everything...

I bet in 6 days at cold crash temps it'll be fine - if you dont move the keg. Time and cold will solve this. I cold crash my beers for a week usually before even transferring to a serving keg anyways.

All else fails...red solo cups

Update - Had my homebrew party yesterday - 7 beers on tap. The Muddy Irish Red was crystal clear. It just needed time as several of you suggested. Thanks again.

 

[Bobby_M]

The thing to remember is that when you add finings to the serving keg, all the murky junk falls to the bottom exactly where the beer is drawn from. It has to get worse before it gets better and you do have have to burn a few pints before it pours clear.