Beer Forum

I brewed two 10-gallon beers ranching yeast from the first to make the second. The first was an IPA. I cold crashed the primary 4 days before racking to keg for dry hopping, then pushing to serving keg. But the beer is still cloudy. Way cloudy. I put 6 oz in a jar and let sit in fridge for a few days and there is a layer of stuff, probably yeast at the bottom. The beer tastes fine, btw. The second beer was a blonde ale made from yeast gleaned from the IPA. Again, I cold crashed 4 days and this time the beer is crystal clear and tastes great! What gives? Here are the differences- the IPA had an OG 1.061, SRM 6.0 and I used 100% carbon filtered city (Sebastopol, CA) water, but I forgot the Whirlfloc. The Blonde had an OG 1.050, SRM 3.6 and I used 50% RO and 4 oz acidulated, adding two Whirlfloc tabs near the end of boil. Since brewing these two beers, I have listened to the "Waterganza" podcast series twice. Now I'm thinking my unadjusted water's RA was too high for the IPA and since I cut the water for the Blonde and added acidulated malt, perhaps the mash pH was a little closer to 5.2. Now I'm thinking of taking that second keg of IPA and giving it the gelatin treatment. Any thoughts? I'll update this post after brewing again and adjusting the water using Palmer's spreadsheet. Any help is appreciated.

Have your beers been kept cold in the keg? If so, for how long? Not using whirlfloc in your IPA could also lead to a much hazier beer with the addition of all those extra hops compared to your blonde ale. I bet it will clear in another week or so, given more time and cold temps.

brewinhard wrote:Have your beers been kept cold in the keg? If so, for how long? Not using whirlfloc in your IPA could also lead to a much hazier beer with the addition of all those extra hops compared to your blonde ale. I bet it will clear in another week or so, given more time and cold temps.

I split the 10 gallons into two 5-gallon kegs. Crashed 18 days after brewing and kept cold ever since- about a month now, except for the 6 days of dry-hopping at 60F. About 1.5 gal consumed from one of them. People actually like the beer. Is it too late to use the gelatin on the untouched keg?

Sounds like two things going on here. Often dry hopping will leave the beer hazy due to suspended hop particles. It will eventually clear if you don't move the keg, but you will probably drink it all before it all clears. The other thing is that the yeast you collected from the IPA is probably the more flocculant stuff that settled out before the rest of the stuff which was left in suspension when you kegged it. This slightly different characteristic will allow your beer to clear much faster than the IPA.

Bugeater wrote:Sounds like two things going on here. Often dry hopping will leave the beer hazy due to suspended hop particles. It will eventually clear if you don't move the keg, but you will probably drink it all before it all clears. The other thing is that the yeast you collected from the IPA is probably the more flocculant stuff that settled out before the rest of the stuff which was left in suspension when you kegged it. This slightly different characteristic will allow your beer to clear much faster than the IPA.

This is interesting. Now that I've looked back at my notes, the yeast for the 2nd, blonde, came from what was decanted from the starter for the first, IPA. Before I pitched, I decanted into a sanitized flask. That stuff left a nice little yeast cake, so I made a starter out of it for the next beer, the blonde, which came out clear. There was a block party today and one of the IPAs is gone already. Still contemplating "gelatin" for the second keg.

An update to the issue I had with that last IPA that came out cloudy- After listening to the "Waterganza" podcast series several times, I downloaded the latest version of Palmer's Spreadsheet and brewed the same 10 gallon IPA. This is what it looks like when racking to keg...

Honestly after reading your post 3 times, I still don't understand what exactly you're asking. You brewed 2 different recipes, using 2 different techniques. I would hope you would get different results from that much understanding of it, but I feel I'm missing something. I also didn't quite follow the leap to talking about the water. I'd love to help out if I can, but I'm going to need a little help understanding what kind of information you're after.