Two brews, one bright, the other cloudy, please help

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WM7793

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Hi, I have just brewed (AG5) and (AG6). AG5 was crystal clear when bottled, (this is a first for me!) but (AG6) was back to being cloudy in the bottle as previous earlier brews.

Now I have a brewday checklist to help maintain consistency, in my haste to make (AG6) I did make a couple of avoidable errors which, due to my inexperience of brewing do not know whether this accounts for the cloudy beer.

Sorry for the long post, but if you can bear with me I will outline the differences between the two brews

Both brews were around 1.043. (AG5) was the first time I have treated my water, I have soft water so additional minerals were added ie Gypsum, Magnesium etc

AG(5) water was prepared and checked for alkalinity the same day
AG(6) this was done the previous evening to save time

AG(5) was Maris Otter
AG(6) was Dingermans Pale malt

The first mistake I made due to rushing on AG(6), was incorrect measurement of total water needed, as I have to jug in to the boiler as I do not have a sight glass and realised later I was short by around 4L

Batch sparge temperature of AG(5 Bright beer) was 75 degrees C
Batch sparge temperature of AG(6 cloudy beer) was 72 degrees C
Both brews were maintained at mashing of 66 degrees C for 90 minutes

Because of the mistake in incorrectly measuring the amount of water required, I fell short during batch sparging AG(6). I added the necessary minerals to the water but AG(6) was short on sparge water.

Other differences between the brews are:

On brew AG(5) I used the water mineral additions calculator, but on AG(6) I tried the Bru'nwater calculator as you can include the malt bill and recalculates the required minerals. To be fair, there was little difference between the two calculators.

Final Gravity's came out OK for both brews but as I have mentioned AG(6) is cloudy in the bottle whereas AG(5) is clearly a lot brighter in the bottle.

Thanks for putting up with the rather long post !

Does anybody have any reasons why there is a difference between the two brews?

I have put things into place to stop silly errors in water measurement for future brews!

Best regards,
WM7793
 
After pouring over my brewing notes, here are some additional discrepancies between the two brews to help the more knowledgeable brewers on this forum, to help me understand why AG(5) was bright at the time of being bottled, and AG(6) was a little cloudy as per my first brews.

Both brews were only 20 pints
AG(5) used East Kent Goldings and Styrian Goldings (90 mins) and Styrian Goldings (10 mins)
AG(6) used First Gold and Progress (90 mins) and Fuggles (10 mins)

AG(5) I used Graham Wheeler's water calculator which recommended adding only the Calcium Sulphate (Gypsum) and Calcium Chloride to the mash water only. The other salts, ie Magnesium Sulphate and Sodium Chloride to be added to the wort to be boiled

AG(6) I used Bru'nwater which recommended that all the ingredients went into the mash and sparge water.

Would this have made any difference between the batches?

AG(6) batch sparge
Now this is where I made an error in measuring total water.
First addition of sparge water of 8.6 litres was treated as per calculator OK. But the remainder of the sparge water was short by 4 litres as mentioned in my opening post.
Now instead of sparging with the recommended 19.4 litres and added salts, I had only 15.4 litres to sparge with.

Would the recommended dosage of Gypsum (7.4gms), relative to the incorrect water (4 litres) shortfall, have any effect on the beer?

Both were left for 90 mins at 66 degrees C, and when sparge water added, mixed, and left for 20 mins to settle prior to sparging.

On both brews Protofloc tablets were added 10 minutes from boil, but I honestly cannot remember whether there were any differences to each brew, ie a quarter or half tablet added

Yeast
Both used the same yeast cultivated from a Brewlab slant and stir plate.
The only difference here is that on AG(5) I used a 400mL starter, and on AG(6) I used a 500mL thinking I may have underpitched slightly

The only other difference between both brews I can think of, is that I left the trub to settle for 30 mins after boiling on AG(5), and only 20 mins on AG(6).

I really hope that someone on this forum can shed some light on this for me, as i was really pleased with AG(5) being so bright at the time of bottling compared to my earlier attempts.

I don't have the knowledge or experience to understand why AG(5) came out bright, and why AG(6) was back to being hazy.

It is very frustrating not to be able to brew ale that is not crystal clear. I am really trying to understand what is actually going on here, but at the moment I am struggling.

Best regards,
WM7793
 
Did you achieve hot and cold breaks with both and did you leave them in the FV for the same length of time and at the same temp?
 
Hi Jonnymorris, and thank you for your reply.

Yes I achieved both hot and cold breaks. With cold break, temperature dropped to 20 degrees C within 15 minutes using immersion chiller.

Both brews were at 19 degrees C for 14 days in a STC controlled fridge and 14 days sat on the garage floor prior to bottling. It was definitely colder during AG(5) brew than for AG(6).

Would this have made a difference?

Best regards,
WM7793
 
WM7793 said:
It was definitely colder during AG(5) brew than for AG(6). Would this have made a difference?
Could be. How much colder are we talking about? If it was significant it could certainly have cleared faster and is much more likely (IMO) than any variation there may have been in water treatment.
 
If I remember it was around 7 or 8 degrees C at the time of AG(5) and around 12 degrees C for AG(6).

What do you think? would this difference in temperature in the garage, account for the hazy beer?

Best regards,
WM7793
 
I've not noticed things taking longer to clear now the temp in garage is rising - not significantly anyway. I'm finding process consistency is the key to a predictable result...

A few checks I do in the process:

- Mash pH aim for 5.3 (range is 5.2 to 5.5). (pH meter from eBay).
- Iodine test for residual starch at 60 mins. If positive, add time to the mash.
- Sparge down to 995, slow and steady, draining MT at 1 l/min.

Yeast makes a big difference for me, I'm finding. I've gone back to fresh packet yeast for each brew (S04 at the moment, although just done a nice Notty brew), mainly for consistency in my process, after a number of "refused to clear" batches. (I was re-using yeast several times over, I think this might have introduced clearing problems).

The Notty brew has cleared in 24 hours out of FV2 with a dose of KwikClear, looking forward to a pint tonight (lots of dry Galaxy hops in it).

I'm still experimenting, but starting to understand the "risks" that lead to a tricky batch - process consistency and yeast reuse are the two I'm focussing on at the moment.
 
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