clearing beer

[guypettigrew]

Very eloquently phrased as usual Eric.
more to the point I dont think they are capable of producing bright beer.
Also they produce four or five beers of various colours that all taste the same.

And there's the centre of it.

Cloudy beer is almost always due to yeast, in my experience. Rarely have I tasted a cloudy beer with a clean refreshing flavour where the cloudiness was due to hops.

Yeast, to my palate, gives the beer a rough, tart and unpleasant bitter taste. From a brewer's point of view, though, it makes life easy. Don't bother cooling at the end of fermentation, don't add any finings, don't give the publican any training in serving the beer.

A micropub local to me has the decency to write on the blackboard which beers are fined and which aren't. They tell me the unfined beers always clear towards the end of the barrel. Has to be yeast, therefore. I want to drink beer, not yeast soup!

Guy

[Cobnut]

I too grew up expecting to see "bright" beer and took this as a mark of a good beer, but there are styles of beer where cloudiness is not a fault.

Bavarian Weissbier is a case in point.

Some don't like it. Fair enough.

Modern hazy IPA styles and NEIPAs where "haze" is a proof point of the style. The haze here is not - in large part - due to yeast, but is due to heavy use of oats, wheat and (as the vernacular would have it) a sh*t ton of hops.

I recently watched an interview with Charlie Bamforth who made what I thought was an interesting point: it is easy to produce hazy beer, but it's really not easy to produce stable haze. And it is stable haze that these modern NEIPAs and hazy IPAs call for. Like them or not, a good NEIPA or Hazy IPA should be hazy from the first to the last pint in the barrel!

I agree with the point that for English styles, the beer should be presented bright. Not to do so is not right FOR THE STYLE. (deliberate emphasis)

Cobnut

[McMullan]

Most beers should be served bright. Fact. Regardless whether it's a fine German lager or a fine Belgian or English ale. And cherry picking changes nothing. Yeast generally throw up all kinds of off flavours and even textures, in my opinion, and often taste like shite, but I can't claim to know what shite actually tastes like, if I'm honest. It's just based on a concept opposite what I like. The odd thing is how so many seem to have accepted the opposite, where the aim is opaque 'beer'. F*cking amateurs. I find it a struggle Brut IPA cracked me up. It was a really big swing over a roundabout

[Cobnut]

@McMullan,

Just cause you don't like it, doesn't *necessarily* mean it's sh*t.

You can argue that MOST cloudy beer is poor brewing practice and I'd agree with you. In fact, I said that very thing above.

And arguing that new styles are wrong per se is also a load of b*llocks!

For example, English bitter was innovative once upon a time and doubtless the old boys of the day dissed it too, but it established itself as something that lots of people liked and drank.

Beer styles - styles in general - develop and change over time. Some people accept change. Others resist it.

I say drink what you like, brew what you like. Share your knowledge of how you brew what you like and if others choose to ignore you and brew or drink what you don't like, who's problem is it really?

I've found since learning to brew AG and learning more about beer styles it has opened my eyes and tastebuds to a whole range of different beers which I'd probably have not tried before. Some I really don't like, others have given me pleasures I would not have otherwise found.

[McMullan]

Whatever

[McMullan]

Yeah, just checked and we still live in a democracy where bright beer is overwhelmingly what's accepted as the standard for 'beer'. Yet we have a minority screaming how wrong they all are. I find that bollocks worse than shite beer. Much more offensive, actually. Especially when it comes from people who haven't got a f*cking clue either way

The alternative:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwVoX65Hvjc

[IPA]

I too grew up expecting to see "bright" beer and took this as a mark of a good beer, but there are styles of beer where cloudiness is not a fault.

Bavarian Weissbier is a case in point.

Some don't like it. Fair enough.

Modern hazy IPA styles and NEIPAs where "haze" is a proof point of the style. The haze here is not - in large part - due to yeast, but is due to heavy use of oats, wheat and (as the vernacular would have it) a sh*t ton of hops.

I recently watched an interview with Charlie Bamforth who made what I thought was an interesting point: it is easy to produce hazy beer, but it's really not easy to produce stable haze. And it is stable haze that these modern NEIPAs and hazy IPAs call for. Like them or not, a good NEIPA or Hazy IPA should be hazy from the first to the last pint in the barrel!

I agree with the point that for English styles, the beer should be presented bright. Not to do so is not right FOR THE STYLE. (deliberate emphasis)

Cobnut

It is very simple to produce hazy beer ( from the first to the last glass). First of all take no steps in the brewing that will give you bright beer. Then as the beer ,despite all your efforts,starts to fall bright give the barrel a shake to re-suspend the crap most brewers seek to eliminate.
This stupid craze will pass and the breweries that not are capable will fail. It's worth remembering that pale ales and lager became so popular because they are bright. That was until our cousins in America decided differently. Also those of us old enough to remember they also tried to hoodwink us into drinking Clear Beer ( Google it) which sank without trace
Anyone can make cloudy beer,I made loads when I started 50 years ago, now it gives me extreme pleasure to brew beer that can be poured from a bottle to the last drop with no trace of sediment in the glass. Something I have yet to find in a commercial brewery's beer.

[Doreblade]

I don't get this desire to produce turgid looking alcoholic orange dishwater. No doubt some taste amazing but beer soup just doesn't appeal to me. Each to their own though, one man's junk is another man's treasure.

Only 1 year in to AG and this Felinfoel DD is proving I'm getting there in the clarity stakes (sic. another thread of mine querying a non clearing brew). To quote another 'its BLM'!


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[Cobnut]

Looks lovely!

[orlando]

Dodgy Glass badge.

[Doreblade]

Dodgy Glass badge.

Cant help that - its the only straight glass I have.

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[orlando]

Forgiven.

[WalesAles]

Dore,
The Beer looks BLM!
You need to cut your nails for the Beer to take Front and Centre!

WA

[IPA]

One of our American contributers, I think it was Laripu, said.
One thing Europeans must remember is that Americans do not like beer that tastes like beer.

[Cobnut]

One of our American contributers, I think it was Laripu, said.
One thing Europeans must remember is that Americans do not like beer that tastes like beer.

Generally, I hate generalisations