Cloudy Pilsner After Lagering

[roddog]

I tried a new pilsner recipe and yeast I haven't used before,

8.44# German Pilsner
0.31# Carafoam
0.23# Acidulated Malt
1oz Tettnang @ 90
1oz Tettnang @ 60
0.75 Tettnang @ 30
0.50 Hallertau @ 15

I mashed @ 152, batch sparged, boilded for 90, cooled with an immersion chiller to 65 then into the fridge overnight and pitched WLP830 (2 vials builtup with 2L starter), fermented following the Tasty Routine with a rest. OG was 1.044. Laggered @ 36 for the last month. Just pulled it out to start carbing it up and take 'a pull off it' as I get ready to brew tomorrow. Totally cloudy.

So how quickly does WLP830 fall out? It has been lagering for 33 days now. I'm going to throw it back into the fridge for another few weeks. Gelatin? Filtering? Call it a Pilsnerweizen?

 

[rpkincaid]

I have had good results using gelatin on pilsners that are cloudy at the end of lagering.

 

[Smellyglove]

How did they look in the bottle? Maybe you have a mix of chill haze in there too. You can add gelatin at cold temperature in your fermentor.

 

[roddog]

I'm kegging

 

[hunter_le five]

+1 for gelatin

I assume you are lagering in the keg? If so, the first few glasses you pull may be cloudy if the dip tube is picking up the sediment that dropped out off the bottom of the keg. Normally my first glass has a bit of sediment, and is clear after that.

Also, depending on how flocculant the yeast is and how much sediment made it into the keg, if you moved the keg after lagering, you may have kicked the sediment back up into suspension when you moved the keg.


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[masonsjax]

What was your water profile? The water chemistry can affect clarity.

The pic looks like yeast in suspension to me though. Was this the first pour after lagering, or maybe you stirred up sediment when moving the keg or transferring to the keg? If so, it will clear up in time.

 

[Smellyglove]

+1 for gelatin

I assume you are lagering in the keg? If so, the first few glasses you pull may be cloudy if the dip tube is picking up the sediment that dropped out off the bottom of the keg. Normally my first glass has a bit of sediment, and is clear after that.

Also, depending on how flocculant the yeast is and how much sediment made it into the keg, if you moved the keg after lagering, you may have kicked the sediment back up into suspension when you moved the keg.


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And +1 for this.

 

[roddog]

I'll hit it with some gelatin and another few weeks at 36. I dumped the first few pints out, I think this is emblematic of the whole keg. Time heals all, no? As an aside, it does taste nice.

 

[hunter_le five]

FWIW, I like to cold crash/use gelatin on my beer in the primary a few days before kegging. That way I end up with very little sediment/yeast at all in my keg, just a few teaspoons in the first glass. That won't help you with this current batch, but it might help with future batches.

Disclaimer: I acknowledge here's more than one way to skin a cat, and that many homebrewers do things differently than I do. I'm not advocating my method as the "best" method, only relaying what I have found in my own personal experience to work best for my particular circumstances.

 

[masonsjax]

You understand why we're asking if you disturbed the sediment and what your water chemistry was? After 33 days of lagering, you should be able to read a newspaper through a glass of this beer and shouldn't need gelatin. I've had yeast starters running on my stirplate that were more clear than what your pic shows. If you didn't stir up sediment and the whole batch looks like this, something went wrong.

 

[hunter_le five]

+1 masonsjax

It certainly looks beyond chill haze. To me it *looks* like quite a bit of yeast made it into the keg, and then he kicked it all back up after lagering by moving it too roughly.

 

[Smellyglove]

Yes. It looks like a ton of yeast. But at the very top I get a chill-haze feeling blended in with the yeast.

What was your clearing.process? Or general process?

 

[roddog]

Just a few more days in the lagering fridge did the trick. I musta swilled it up a bit moving some CO2 tanks. Made a nice batch of Pretzels to go with it, tasty.

Thanks for the help!

 

[ajdelange]

Keep in mind that as a beer clears the yeast drop so the beer is clearest at the top of the keg earliest and only becomes clear at the bottom after a long time. But we don't draw from the top, do we? We draw from where the beer stays cloudiest longest.

 

[roddog]

Sage words ajdelange... This is also contributing to the phenomenon of the last point on the keg being the best one (and the extra time)...