104° in the shade. HB Blonde and AC in the house.
What are you drinking now?
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Noob_Brewer
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HB NEIPA, 6.5%, Single Hopped with Nectaron. Dig it.
102°F here.
Guiness Extra Stout.
Guiness Extra Stout.
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HB Pale Ale
Got this from a friend who gets an assortment of beers every few months a "beer of the month club." Very yummy and got to say NEIPA taste better from a New England brewery. This is from Stoneface Brewing in New Hampshire.
HB roggenbier. Because where would I find a commercial example?
A glass of the Bohemian pils I kegged last weekend. Got a good pound of Saaz for once and it sure makes a difference.
Are you using any fining agents?
Noob_Brewer
Well-Known Member
HB NEIPA- nectaron hopped. Same as before but buddy came over and sun came out, so it glows again 
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Another Hi-Wire sour. A little lemon, not much sour at all. Checked the packaging date: 05/20/21. That may have something to do with it (and why it was on sale)!
Wow offline for a couple of days and three full pages.
Took my oldest and her best friend camping this weekend at the family property. Such a great time. Swung by a new local small craft brewery on the way home today & cracked open their WC IPA while making dinner.
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Yep, honey wine.
Tasty coffee milk stout.
It's a hot afternoon in L.A.
user 263363
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Good luck! My first couple tries were, uh, less than great. Now days, I consider my mead to be much better than my beer.
I firmly believe in better things for better living through chemistry, so that's a firm yes.
During the 2+ years of my COVID Panther Piss adjunct lager project, I got real serious about clarity. You can't claim to have made a better fizzy yellow swill unless it is brilliantly clear on an industrial brewing timescale. You can't claim to have beaten them until you beat them on their turf and their home turf is a short timescale.
Challenge accepted. Here's how I went to war against fizzy yellow swill.
Prior to the Panther Piss project, I always used Whirlfloc in the kettle (unless there was a reason not to) and for the past year I've used the stuff that you see below in the keg. Prior to this, I've used gelatin and Biofine. I prefer Biofine over gelatin. I like this stuff over Biofine because it is a whole lot cheaper than Biofine. I bought it about three years ago because it was cheap as chips, about twenty bucks on Amazon. I didn't have the courage to start using it until COVID made Biofine hard to get. I dread the day this bottle runs dry...I have about 10 years to worry about that, though.
Whirlfloc and keg finings are fine for highly flocculant UK strains. To get my fizzy yellow swill to drop clear on an industrial timescale required some process and water adjustments. The first thing that I needed to do was abandon my beloved batch sparging blue cooler with it's amazingly easy to use bag and move back to fly sparging. This allowed me to run the extended step mashes that were now necessary for fizzy yellow swill brewing and it allowed me to run a proper recirculation rig (sans RIMs).
If you look at brewing as a process of repeatedly filtering a porridge made of barley, perhaps you can see why I think this is important. Yeah, you can filter downstream from the mash, but I think filtering everything that you can in the mash helps. I'll concede that it isn't critical--but my experience suggests that it is helpful.
In parallel, I was working on my water. Years of trying to soften my DC tap water or trying to build my own water from distilled had taught me that soft water really isn't good brewing water--for any style. The results are always bland, cloudy, yeasty, and a bit acidic. I currently have a horrible cream ale on draught that went through the exact same processes as the pils you asked about but is ugly in the glass and worse on the tongue. It hit the exact pH targets, received the same extended mash, and was kegged in the same way, on the same day. The only difference is the water, see the second photo below.
I think the real trick to brewing excellent lagers that have satisfying malt and hops expression and quickly drop clear is pushing your sulfate as aggressively as you dare, then using calcium carbonate to push your calcium a bit higher. This will result in a thin, minerally lager that will quickly drop clear. That's where boring old salt comes in. It took me a frustrating year to figure this out, but out of desperation I added 2g of non-iodized salt to my lousy lagers....BINGO!!!!! Everything came together. Eventually, I learned that 1g of salt, with my DC water, is good for light lagers, 2g of salt is nice in darker lagers. I haven't bothered goofing around with 3gs because I don't see the need. Nevertheless, I should explore that, just to see.
Last, I re-pitch big and recklessly. I've been brewing for long enough that I didn't get swept up in the Jamil Zainisheff "coddle your precious little yeasties" fad. Yeast don't need to be treated with kid gloves, much less subjected to helicopter parenting. Nature sucks at math. It doesn't know about ideal pitching rates. It is does, however, have a keen interest in gluttony and orgies. Just keg off your fermenter, swirl the trub and cake vigorously, then quickly pour that stuff out. The stuff that hangs onto the side of your fermenter will be more than enough to hit TG on your next batch of similar OG lager within five days. Crash it for a week at 40F, then keg it. I've run this out to ten generations, I've only re-pitched because I wanted to switch from 34/70/Diamond to S-189. Lager yeast loves to be repitched!
Last, in parallel to all the above, I've been incrementally introducing LODO into my brewery as part of the Panther Piss project. I still use my copper IC, but I'm otherwise LODO-spec. I do use Vitamin-C/Ascorbic acid at kegging time. Unlike most LODO methods, I do think this one is tangible in the finished beer. I didn't bother with yeast oxygen scavenging on this beer because I haven't seen the result in the finished beer and I wanted to use it as a control.
Anyway, this is how I learned to make lagers that quickly clear. I'm sorry about the length of this post, but it's all intertwined. I can't distill it down to "One Simple Hack That Your LHBS Doesn't Want You To Know About."
Thanks for asking about how I get my beer clear. My brewery is currently at a crossroads. With Panther Piss winding up, I'm not sure where to go next. You gave me the opportunity to think critically about where my brewery has been and think a bit about where I want to go next. Thank you.
I hope you found this useful.
Photo one
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Wow, that’s very insightful. I use Whirlfloc and gelatin. Now I have something else to think about. I too like crystal clear beer when it’s appropriate to style.
TwistedGray
El Jefe Brewing Company
@Atlantatopher BLESS beer
HB Pre-Pro Lager
Thank you.
From where I stand, it doesn't seem all that insightful. It seems more like a collection of failures and disasters.
Anyway, I intend to let that intentional fiasco of a cream ale that I made with soft water and Nottingham sit for a further week in the keg. It'll get clearer, but it won't drop drop clear. Next weekend I intend to squirt a bit of gypsum and salt through the gas in port and see what happens. At that point, I suspect it'll drop clear, very quickly.
Had to bring the kid back down to Huntsville. MBC Lunch at Casual Pint last night, some of these in the hotel tonight, locals going home for later tomorrow
505-Brewer
Well-Known Member
Brought back from a recent trip to Minnesota. Dream Yard, from Modest Brewing. A 7.1% hazy brewed with Citra and Sultana hops.
505-Brewer
Well-Known Member
Bet it tastes delicious even at that price!
Überbrew Scotch Ale
I needed bottles. Saw this in the box and figured, "Can't get hurt with Two Hearted." ...Then I had to pay for it. Ouch.
My beer after mowing the lawn… the smaller glass is for basting the roast.
Beer... is there anything it can't do!
Homebrewed lavender cream ale that my brother brewed. It's really good, the lavender smells more like rosehips to me than the plethora of lavender scented cleaning products or candles. The lavender adds a great floral taste to the beer as well and the bitterness is there but really well balanced.
I'm almost kinda pissed that my younger brother brewed such an awesome beer... Nawww, I'm proud of him.
HB Vienna lager
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