tasty vorlauf and cloudy runnings

[subsub]

Don't know if this helps, but I've never recirculated any of my wort. I always get a mildly cloudy sample to read the og from but it all disappears once the beer conditions and I don't get any problems with haze either

[eddetchon]

Thanks to Dave for posting those links - particularly the one from Brewers contact. I have a couple of ales that were bottled just over a month ago, which were both quite cloudy from the time they came out the mash tun right through boiling and chilling and following ferment. both had wheat malt in them - small quantities - 200g and 100g in 20 litre batches respectively. Saf-04 was the yeast. the beers taste pretty good.

so, my question is, from looking at the table and following discussion, if i have a haze due to wheat that will 'eventually' drop, how long might it take to drop? they're showing only minimal signs of clearing at present - one month after bottling as i said.

i certainly never got the same flaky hot break that i get when i do a hefeweizen, but then i assume that maybe that's cos i usually do a protein rest using pils malt in such a beer.

[oblivious]

My wheat beer (50% wheat) with brewferm blanche yeast was the clearest beer I have made!

[David Edge]

i certainly never got the same flaky hot break that i get when i do a hefeweizen, but then i assume that maybe that's cos i usually do a protein rest

I'm out of my depth! You know more about this than me. Protein rests?

I think the haze in Hefeweizen is from the yeast (D=Hefe) rather than the wheat. That said my Witbiers start cloudy with S-04 or WLP300 and then clear later. 'fraid I don't know why.

On the commercial side, a Derby brewery can't get it's wheat beer to stay cloudy. Oakham are going to do a clear wheat beer.

it might have a bacterial haze by now

a sniff will give you a hint!

I've never recirculated any of my wort... and I don't get any problems with haze either

Might help to define what you regard as a problem though! I had a quick word with cellar who proposed:
bright - see fingerprints
clear - read newsprint clearly
hazy - just read newsprint
cloudy - can't read newsprint

whether a pub can achieve bright or clear depends on the beer - both are perfectly saleable. hazy you sell if you have to, cloudy you can't sell. Me, I'll drink something like porage if it tastes ok (Adnams in Enfield once). How good is good enough for you?

[Aleman]

(although that ph5.2 should have resolved that).

Possibly not though, IN fact too much could have the opposite effect. Bear with me for a bit.

As the wort boils the pH drops (ie it gets more acid), this aids the coagulation of protein through the hydrolysis of the amino acid chains, (The protein chains get broken up) exposing a positive end and a negative end. These bind with tannins (not strictly true but it will do) and fall out of solution.

Now you take a big dose of a pH Buffer, add it to your mash and during the sparge you wash it into your boiler. Guess what its going to do? Correct prevent the pH from dropping during the boil, and potentially prevent the protein coagulation from taking place.

Just a thought

[Vossy1]

Righty ho TJB...questions.

Is it correct to assume that if your mash is already close to ph 5.2 and you add the normal amount of the product ph5.2, then more of the 'unused' buffer will end up in the kettle thus preventing the protein coagulation taking place?

[Aleman]

Vossy,

I think that is a fairly safe assumption, without doing a titration against a 'standard' acid there is no real way of knowing just what the buffering capacity of the wort would be, and therefore just how much it will/could throw the boil pH off.

I did very nearly buy some pH 5.2 with my last order from H&G but decided not to at the last minute, the issue for me being that I don't randomly bung handfuls of liquor salts into the mash without measuring stuff before hand, so there is no sensible reason to do so with pH 5.2, as the mash is a big buffer in the first place

The only real way of checking to see if this is a problem, is to add it to a brew, and use an accurate pH meter to accurately measure the pH during the boil. I tend not to have the time to do this during the boil as I'm normally rushing around trying to sort out yet another piece of cooling kit

[Vossy1]

I'm normally rushing around trying to sort out yet another piece of cooling kit

[Dan]

http://www.brewerssupplygroup.com/pdf/k ... nology.pdf

Im waiting for some ph5.2 from hop and grape. its on back order (apparently they only got a small amount in and it sold out fast) Im definately going to give it a try.
If you have a read of that pdf on kettle finings, the optimum ph for coagulation is above 5.0 so it might even aid hotbreak formation by buffing the boil ph.

[mysterio]

5.2 stabiliser works for me every time even with my soft water. I brewed a porter today with a lot of roasted malts and I suspected this cause problems with my mash ph, but it was bang on 5.2 with the stabiliser.

[Vossy1]

Dan,

In the 'ferment on or off cold break' topic you said you get very little cold break.
Could this be the cause of the haze, ie, the protein doesn't come out of solution.
In my 2 x 23 batches yesterday there was a good 1" depth of cold break in the bottom of each fermentor.
How quickly is your batch cooled

[Dan]

interesting point there.

I cool with an imersion chiller made from 25feet of B&Q copper 8m pipe. on a 50-60L batch it gets the temp down from 100C to 40C in 10 mins and from 40C to 20C in 20-30mins depending on mains water temp/pressure.

I would say on an average day from 100-20C takes 40mins

I understand the benefits of plate and CFC chillers being that the main body of wort stays hot while a small portion is rapidly cooled. but how rapid is rapidly cooled for
what do you use?


I usualy get about an inch of sediment in a 60l fermenter before the onset of fermentation. but this could be a mix of hot and cold break.

in david edges link to the doc on beer haze, It mentions the chill/perminant haze being, the association between polyphenols and proteins to from coloids.
In the "brewers hand book" it mentions cold break is protein and tannin complexes. so I guess if my wort is full of proteins and tannins and im not creating the conditions to combine them during cooling. they will later form the coloidal hazes im suffering from.

[Vossy1]

You're cooling times seems fine to me and the inch of break in the fermentor sounds just like my results.

I must admit that when I started recircing the cooled wort back to the kettle to cool the batch as a whole I was worried what effect this would have on the cold break ie,

the wort goes through the cfc, the cb precipitates and then it goes back into a hot solution of wort...does the cb redissolve? is it now in an insoluable state...I don't know..

What I do know is that the mechanical action of recircing makes the cb particles so small that they get through the hop bed and into the fv...fun and games.

How rapidly is rapid for me...well this wekend wasn't too bad actually.
I made a change and didn't recirc the runnings ro the copper
My pc cooled 46 ltrs from 100 deg c to 23 deg c in 25 minutes, straight to fv. I had to restrict the wort output as I'm still having problems with the pc.

With my modified cfc I can chill to tap temp (16 deg c) at 7ltr/min so a 46ltr batch should take under 7 minutes.
The problem is that I might have to restrict the flow of the coolant as tap temp is 16 deg c at the mo..a tad too cold, but I'd rather have that problem, than cooling to slowly

I'll be putting the cfc through it's paces later today prior to a brew tomorrow

[Dan]

thats interesting you recirculate.
http://brewingtechniques.com/library/ba ... rchet.html
heres an article on cold break. apparently it WILL redisolve if heated.
have a look at table 2 it shows how much cold break is precipitated as the temp cools.
I always used to wonder if a brewery could use hops to filter cold break, then why go to all these expensive measures like floatation and chill filtering. I assumed that only sticky hotbreak was removed in the hops and whispy cold break was just created and transfered to the FV.

[David Edge]

why go to all these expensive measures like floatation and chill filtering

one would infer that overall it is less expensive for the degree of polish and stability the product requires. Recirculating though hops isn't going to remove everything above a micron - or rather everything that would be above a micron were it chilled to 1C to precipitate more protein.

What works in a factory the size of Walsall selling beer that has above all else to be optically polished and have good shelf life at 35C is not necessarily the most appropriate technique for the craft brewer!