1. Home
  2. Home Beer Brewing
  3. Cloudy brew (not yeast)

Cloudy brew (not yeast)

I am relatively new to all-grain brewing. I am performing single step infusion mashes. The last beer I made was a light ale. It was very cloudy, right from the beginning. After a few days, it looked like quite a lot of the yeast had fallen out, but was still very cloudy. I took a sample to a lab and looked at it under a microscope. There were very few yeast cells, but quite a lot of other, irregularly shaped particles about the size of bacteria, but not rounded like a bacterium would be. I put a sample through a 0.45 micron filter and it was completely clear as far as I could tell.

I did not expect Isinglas to do any good (it is for flocculating yeast and I had already verified yeast was not a problem), but I added it to half the batch at bottling and none to the other half. As I thought, it had no effect. It is not chill haze because it is present whether cold or warm.

Does anyone have any good personal experience with what the likely cause it and what the solutions are? I think it must be either unconverted starch grains or protein.

One other observation; I have not been able to get a very high efficiency with mashing and my wort is always low on OG, this batch was probably at

1.035 when I expected closer to 1.045. I think the problem is with the grind; it does not appear fine enough. I don't have my own mill and it is ground for me at the homebrew shop, but they are mostly wine people and not homebrewers themselves.
Reply to
news.utk.edu
Loading thread data ...

Low efficiency is very often related to undercrushing. If the shop where you buy your grain can't or won't adjust their mill, ask them to run it through twice.

--------->Denny

Reply to
Denny Conn

Reply to
Sarbjit Sikka

Sarge, he's doing AG, so he's not using extract. I don't get the cheesecloth in the primary thing..why do you put cheesecloth in your primary? What does it do?

-------->Denny

Reply to
Denny Conn

Reply to
Sarbjit Sikka

It's certainly not a brewing proicess I've ever heard of before, and I thought I'd heard about all of them! :) There is absolutely no need to keep the grains in the fermenter. There will be no further extraction (or breakdown) by doinfg so. Rice hulls for flavor? They don't have any flavor. They're used in an all grain batch when you use huisless grist such as wheat or rye...they provide the husks to aid lautering. And if you're saying you boil the grains, you might try not doing that. It extracts tannins which can give your beer a harsh taste.

Have you ever looked at

formatting link
It's about the best source of accurate brewing info around.

--------->Denny

Reply to
Denny Conn

Reply to
Sarbjit Sikka

Well, I still don't understand tghe resoning behind grains in the fermenter, but if it works for you...

Nope, John Palmer is one of the most respected homebrew writers around. His "How to Brew" has pretty much replaced Papazian's "New Complete Joy of Homebrewing" as the bible for homebrewers.

------------->Denny

Reply to
Denny Conn

Reply to
Sarbjit Sikka

No disrespect taken, but I'd appreciate it if you'd ask Wally about the brewing science behind his recommendation. It just makes no sense.

Well, that's why we all brew..so we can do it like we like it. But if you recommend offbeat techniques to others, it helps to be able to back up your recommendations. If you look a little closer at Palmer's credentials, I think you'd be impressed.

BTW, I like my beer strong and in 5 gal. kegs! :)

--------->Denny

Reply to
Denny Conn

Sarge, I brew all grain these days...you can see my setup at

formatting link
along with the copy for an article I wrote for Brew Your Own magazine.. When I did extract, I would put the grains in a bag, and put that in my pot while the water heated up. Once the water gets to 160ish, remove the bag. At that point, everything that can be extracted from the grain has been and if you leave it in til the water gets hotter, you can extract tannins which give your beer a harsh taste. That's why I'm confused about the reason for leaving the grains in the fermenter. The onlky reason to use rice, wheat or barley hulls is when you use huskless grains like wheat or wheat malt or rye (my latest article for BYO is on rye). The hsuk impart no flavor, but make lauterting easier in an all grain mash. Again, that's why I'm confused about why you use them. I buy supplies in bulk (grain in 50 lb. bags, hops by the lb.) from my local homebrew shop.

Keep those questions coming and check out my webpage!

--------->Denny

Reply to
Denny Conn

Reply to
Sarbjit Sikka

DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.