What's going on with this Barleywine?

[Lost1anguage]

So below are 2 photos which might be capable of illustrating the problem to the carefully trained eye.

I brewed my first Barleywine over a month ago now and after 3.5 weeks in the frementors I threw it through my filtration system (~5 micron) and into my keg.

Kegging was too alluring to pass on (even without a dedicated fridge) so my fridge has a nice top shelf that can hold a (2) 5 gallon keg lying on their side. Unfortunately this leads to lifting and moving the kegs out of the fridge whenever I want a beer. When the kegs are full, this is a big pain in the butt, lots of sloshing and .

What happens is that when I grab the keg and pour a glass of barley wine, the first glass is clean, malty, and perfect. Then after an unknown amount of time (usually around 30 min to an hour or so), something apparently settles out of the beer and then next pour is super cloudy. I can taste whatever the cloudiness is, and it is pretty off-putting.

Is it yeast? I'm having trouble assuming that. It's gone through a 5 micron filter, there shouldn't be too much yeast left in there right? I've served/drank a gallon of it by now and I'm still getting these cloudy awful tasting glasses.

Is there such thing as a reverse chill haze?

What can I do about it?

 

[ong]

I can imagine you're stirring up a lot of stuff if you have to move the keg every time! I expect you've got a lot of trub that settles on the side of the keg in the fridge. When you pour your first glass, you're serving some beer that was already in the lines, plus some clear-ish beer from the bottom. After the keg has been standing upright for awhile, all the trub settles down to the bottom.

Can you jump it to another keg, at least? Let it settle down, pour off a few ounces of goop, then jump clear beer into a new keg?

 

[ong]

That is also super young for a barleywine -- what ABV or OG?

 

[Lost1anguage]

Thanks for the response! The glass last night was at the 4.5 week mark and the first one was exceptional!

ABV is ~10.5%
OG was ~1.100
FG was ~1.020

WL099 didn't quite hit 80% let alone soar past it like I expected. It was my first starter for which I sized properly (1 gal) but almost certainly decanted WAY before everything settled
at about 20 hours in the fridge.

Shouldn't the trub be pretty much nonexistent if I had sent it through a ~5 micron filter? When I did filter it, I had to pause filtration 3 times to open and squeeze the filter clean. I dumped the waste each time into the original keg. I've done that before on a fruit beer I brewed before and never got any other cloudiness in that batch.

 

[erikpete18]

If I remember correctly, 5 micron isn't generally fine enough to get all of the yeast out. You certainly probably got a bunch of it out, especially the flocculated yeast that got stirred up during racking, but even at 3.5 weeks I'd imagine you've got a fair share of yeast still in suspension that could probably pass through the 5 micron filter. I've heard of people starting with a 5 micron and then setting up either a 1 micron or even 0.5 micron after to catch whatever gets through the first. You could also make sure to cold crash your fermenter (if you aren't already) to try to get more of the yeast out of suspension and into the flocculated cake.

I suppose its also possible that, being a barleywine, you wound up with a lot of protein in solution that was soluble when you were filtering it but is now crashing out in the cold. Chilling before filtering would help with that as well, although I'm not sure what size filter you'd need for the protein clumps.

 

[Beernik]

That's what my thought was: proteins that coagulated and dropped out once the keg was cooled.

 

[Lost1anguage]

Looks like yeast is definitely still in suspension. I left the keg out overnight with the lines still connected and full and there is settled yeast in the low points of the serving tube.

I guess 5 microns isn't a catch all for all yeast in all beer, lesson learned. Cold crashing will be easier said than done. I don't have that kind of volume in my fridge, I wonder if there are alternatives in portable coolers I could try. Any suggestions?

 

[bethebrew]

That's what my thought was: proteins that coagulated and dropped out once the keg was cooled.

Protein haze?

 

[Beernik]

It doesn't necessarily have to be proteins that cause chill haze. But when you get beer cold, all of the proteins are not as soluble as at warmer temperatures. Some can cause chill haze. But if you chill it long enough and proteins start floccing out, every time you flip the keg, they resuspend the same way settled yeast would.

I would think that if it was yeast, the barley wine would have an accompanying bready off flavor.