chill haze

[Ian]

Hi folk,

  I just wondered whether someone might enlighten me a wee bit. I am happy indeed with the ale I have been brewing and now know for sure that AG brewing is the very essence of life. One small thing though, I generally get a little chill haze in my beer. It really doesn't worry me much at all, but I am a tad curious. I do a batch sparge, so roughly half the water in my HLT goes into the mash. After the mash I do a vorlauf and then drain, add the otther half of the water, vorlauf again, and drain.

  I do tilt the mash tun a bit when draining because I have a bit of volume beneath the false bottom and also tilt the kettle and fermentor when draining for the similar reason that the taps if fairly high from the bottom of the kettle and the fermentor respectively, but in both instances I stop draining the moment I see any cloudiness emerging from the tap. I also use Irish Moss to subdue the trub just before the end of the boil.

  When I keg the beer it goes into the fridge with CO2 and apart from sips now and then I only really start drinking the beer after about four weeks of conditioning, which definately is a good thing.

  But still a bit of chill haze. As I say, no worry, because it doesn't offend my sense of aesthetics at all, but I did wonder whether it is normal and whether you experienced much the same.

Cheers,

Ian

[JoKing]

Do you use kettle finings?

[Ian]

Hi Jo,

  No, I haven't used finings. Just the irish moss. The instructions say to pop in one teaspoon of Irish moss to the kettle ten minutes before knockout - but not to rehydrate it or anything. Is it better to use the finings instead?

[Andrew]

Another cause could be not cooling quick enough. If you don't cool down with an immersion chiller which rapidly cools the wort and causes the proteins to drop out better. I have to say I've always used Koppafloc in the boil and Coppertun finings in the bottle and never had too much of an issue.

[Ian]

Yeah, my cold break is OK I  think. I have a really neat little wort chiller and pump tap water through at counter flow to the wort and get the whole lot down into the fermentor at about 21 degrees C.

[Andrew]

That should definitely help. I'd give the Koppafloc a go and try some Isinglass or gelatin for clearing the final beer.. They're pretty cheap and work well but to be honest don't make the beer taste any better. It just looks cool!

[jt]

I'd give the Koppafloc a go

 

I got a better result with Koppafloc than irish moss, but I know some people are good with irish Moss and I recall some people rehydrate it ?

[Ian]

Thanks guys. The Irish moss I have is literally like pieces of dried seaweed and not ground fine or anything. I'm not sure that matters, but maybe rehydration is a good idea. I rehydrated my SO2 yeast this last brew and fermentaion took off like jet propulsion.