Hi Everyone,
I'm hoping you can help me troubleshoot an issue. We're sometimes seeing our hazy IPA's drop clear within just a couple of weeks, or even in the bright tank over just a few days. This is a newish issue over the past year for us, so it's vexing -- people expect a certain appearance in these beers. Here's some info:
*Typically our malt bills are very simple: base malt plus 15-25% malted wheat and/or malted oats
*Dry hopping typically these days at end of fermentation with 3-5lbs/bbl of T90
Now, there is one obvious possible reason for this, which is that our yeast has slowly evolved into a different animal. We have been top cropping and repitching our own house strain now for 300 generations. It was originally a London Ale 3 type yeast. The goal of our serial repitching being to evolve our own unique house strain. Well, maybe we have evolved a strain that produces less stable haze. Of course, I am hoping there is some other explanation because I love the character of our now-unique strain! But I am at a loss. It's frustratingly inconsistent. Some things we've tried:
-playing with different pH at knockout and at DH
-dry hopping at various temperatures
-additions of dextrin malt to grist
-additions of raw wheat to grist
-removing late-fermentation dry hop additions, moving DH exclusively to post-ferm
Has anyone else dealt with hazy beers dropping clear and if so, how did you remedy?
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Joe Grimm
Brooklyn NY
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