Silica

[beerbellyblvd]

I am getting ready to use Silica for the first time, please any advice would be greatly appreciated this Silica is in powered form.

 

[nebben]

Why use silica for brewing purposes? What is the intended result?

 

[malkore]

Agreed...silica for what? silica sand? silica gel?

 

[Jbear]

I have been told by a local brewery that they use a silica based fining agent so that would be my guess. If that is the case, I'd love to know where you got the product since I am veggie I'd really like to have a fining option available.

 

[plaidpaint]

since I am veggie I'd really like to have a fining option available.

Could you use a gelatin derived from kelp, like agar? That should work for vegetarians. Or Polyclar, which is plastic.

Reading into Papazian's book (my edition of which is from 1984) paraphrased: "Activated silica gel is not available to the homebrewer but is used by many commercial brewers. It does the same thing as polyclar, except that it adsorbs protein molecules rather than tannins." So I'm guessing something has changed in the intervening 20 years, but I have no actual advice to offer. Hopefully it came with directions

 

[plaidpaint]

Here's some advice from the Google box:
http://www.brewerylane.com/finings.html

Kieselsol

Silicon dioxide. Silica.

Fining agent for beer or wine.Should be used in conjunction with gelatin. Add 2.2 ml per litre of wine or beer (about 50 ml per 23 litre batch). Use a syringe for accurate measurement. Stir thoroughly. Wait two weeks and rack off sediment.

 

[cervezarara]

If you look in the wine making section of most HBS, they should have kieselsol, which is negatively charged silica gel. It is usually used in conjunction with chitosan, a positively charged polymer made from crustacean shells (and thus not veggie) or gelatin (ditto), for fining wine. Irish moss and whirfloc are negatively charged also, and should bind to positively charged proteins and cause them to drop.

I have used kieselsol in wine making (asi stated above, along with chitosan) but never tried it in ale. Please let us know if it works for you.

 

[Jbear]

Thanks for the suggestions! I will look into those agents and see what will work best for me. I do use Irish moss in the boil so the fining agent really only came up with the Kolsch I made recently (and an empty pipeline causing me to look into ways of clearing it faster, lol). I'll definitely report back if when I experiment.