PistolPatch wrote:Still short on time sorry Jerry but I'll try and do a fast answer here before I have Friday beers (and start thinking of more worries
).
Here's what I was thinking of yesterday...
1. First step towards fixing clarity issues is to do a 90 minute good rolling boil.
2. Use Irish moss, whirfloc, koppafloc or something similar in the boil. These are negatively charged.
3. If kegging, you can cold crash the fermenter and use other finings that are positively charged such as gelatin, isinglass, PVPP etc and/or filtering if you really want to.
4. If bottling...
What is worrying me here is that in this situation, is that you have gone from primary, to secondary and you will still have to go to most likely, bottling bucket and then from bottling bucket (if bulk priming) into fermentor. That's four transfers and everyone of those is exposing you to risk. I'd really prefer to see you forgetting about finings post-boil. Try the 90 minute boil first and check locally that there is nothing majorly wrong with your water. Just do a gentle transfer from fermentor to bottling bucket and go from there.
The other thing is that your beer has been sitting in a fermentor and primary for a while now. If there is any oxygen allowed in tehr, that is not great. Also, you have cold crashed and this makes working out how much to prime by quite difficult. I think you are going to be best to bottle the beer cold and reduce the priming rate accordingly. This cold-crashing can also shock the yeast into dormancy resulting in failed priming.
What I'm saying here is don't put so much emphasis on clarity at this stage of the game. Explore the options above first and do gentle transfers. Determine the cause of any haze before worrying about it. (eg is it protein haze?)
Finally, let your beer lager/condition in the bottle. In other words, this beer could have been bottled about two weeks ago and now be heading into some cold conditioning.
Hope that helps a bit. That was pretty quick for me
,
PP
Thank you so much for your response and insights.
In preparation of this batch, there was a full 90 minute rolling boil.
I used Whirfloc in last 10 minutes of boil.
I used Reverse Osmosis water amended as noted in the recipe. City water here is close to unusable.
I will be bottling.
SO on to the rest of the ferment....
The transfer to secondary, I understand, is controversial. I did the transfer when the yeast was still mildly active producing some CO2. I went from a 6 gallon bottle to a 5 gallon bottle to reduce the head space, and the gentle transfer released some more CO2, thus I believe adequately purging the head space in the secondary. The lock bubbled for several more days. The wort is now quite nice appearance although mildly hazy.
I could bottle as is. The taste would not suffer at all. Only the appearance.
The original brewer of this recipe kegged the product. He routinely uses gelatin with this Kolsch yeast (Wyeast) as it tends to remain suspended.
I would argue with him but he has won several competitions with this recipe.
As you note, I am a bit concerned about adding gelatin at this point which would expose the headspace to oxygen for a day, and then again when bottling.
I may just go ahead and bottle and see if it settles more in the bottles. I do not intend to enter it into competition anyway, so the result will be a learning experience. (I usually put two bottles into plastic soda bottles with screw top caps. These serve as indicators for successful priming. The bottles remain flaccid if priming fails, and become firm if successful. The beer keeps quite nicely in the plastic for a few weeks, but not longer. So I use these up first.)
I plan to bottle, probably tomorrow, so if anyone has any further comments or suggestions, I am open until then
Cheers,
Jerry
. Bottling is a lot different from kegging.
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I had to be very careful not to get any sediment in the glass. Its clarity is probably in line with my other beers at the same age which all cleared up alot given more time, which isnt easy 