Ask The Brewmasters

Hoping for some helpful insight into an issue we've been having for a little while now. We are experiencing very long times for our beers to clarify in the brite tanks, like 14+ days long.

We moved locations and installed an RO system, and the increased time to clarify started around that time. We add salts and target a minimum of 50 ppm of Ca in every brew. We use silicone dioxide ( we've used both biofine clear and sil floc brands) as a clarifying agent. We've done dosing rate tests, generally seeing consistent results of more being better (no signs of "fluffy bottoms" in these tests), but we cap our tests at 200 mL/bbl, which is much higher than the other brewers in the area I've spoken to about their dosing rates. Using that dosing rate of 200mL/bbl we see long conditioning times, with the proteins stratifying before finally settling, leading me to believe we may be dealing with a "fluffy bottoms" situation. So we tried several dosing rates on full batches between 50mL/bbl and 150mL/bbl, those beers seemed to have similar clarifying times, though on the lower end there was no signs of the stratification, but the overall clarity was poor.

This is an issue across styles, no sign of hop heavy beers being a particular problem. These conditioning times are killing our production, but I'm not willing to sacrifice product quality to turn tanks over faster. 

Thanks for any insights,

------------------------------
Matt Yergey
Head Brewer
Yergey Brewing
Emmaus PA
------------------------------

Hi Matt,

Kris Kalav's recent MBAA webinar entitled, "Allow Me To Clarify" may help answer some of the questions around getting the beer to drop clear quicker. Here is the link:

https://www.mbaa.com/education/webinars/Pages/Allow-me-to-Clarify.aspx

This MBAA podcast on colloidal silica from 2018 may be helpful as well:

Ezeani, C. 2018. Colloidal silica. Podcast. Master Brewers Association
of the Americas, Saint Paul, MN. http://masterbrewerspodcast.com/103-
colloidal-silica

Hope this helps!

Dana

------------------------------
Dana Johnson
Technical Director, Craft Brewing
Birko - A Diversey Company
Henderson CO
(800) 233-1000, ext. 117
------------------------------

Daniel,

Thanks for your thoughts. We check our mash pH and are consistently in our target range (5.2-5.6), is there another metric to be checking outside of pH? In terms of kettle finings, we use whirlfloc tabs, and samples of our wort going into the fermenter drop clear fairly quickly on the bench. I am not familiar with Brewbrite, but will look into it.

------------------------------
Matt Yergey
Head Brewer
Yergey Brewing
Emmaus PA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2023 13:26
From: Daniel Carey
Subject: Long Clarification Times

Hi Matt,

I wonder if something in the chemistry of your mash and boil changed due to new facility and water?

Your final beer treatment is not addressing the root cause which is probably occurring farther upstream.

Certainly looking at mash pH, kettle boil should be done but I would try kettle finings like Brewbrite or the like.

That will lessen the burden on your fining agent.

Good Luck,

Daniel Carey

New Glarus Brewing Company

 

Original Message:
Sent: 8/24/2023 2:35:00 PM
From: Matt Yergey
Subject: RE: Long Clarification Times

Daniel,

Thanks for your thoughts. We check our mash pH and are consistently in our target range (5.2-5.6), is there another metric to be checking outside of pH? In terms of kettle finings, we use whirlfloc tabs, and samples of our wort going into the fermenter drop clear fairly quickly on the bench. I am not familiar with Brewbrite, but will look into it.

------------------------------
Matt Yergey
Head Brewer
Yergey Brewing
Emmaus PA
------------------------------

50 ppm as CaCO3 is soft water. You may get better sedimentation if you bump up the hardness to 100 or 150 ppm.

Roger Barth, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry
West Chester University
rbarth@wcupa.edu

Author of
The Chemistry of Beer, The Science in the Suds, Second Edition. ISBN 978-1-119-78333-0
Mastering Brewing Science: Quality and Production. ISBN 978-1-119-45605-6.

________________________________

This e-mail message was sent from a retired or emeritus status employee of West Chester University.

Hey Matt, 

What temperature are you fining at and how are you dosing/mixing it in? 

------------------------------
Dallas Archer
Upstream Brewing Company
Omaha NE
dallasarcher@gmail.com
(402) 490-3256
------------------------------

Dallas,

We dose the fining into the brite prior to purging, and then transfer crashed beer (32*F) into the tank.

------------------------------
Matt Yergey
Head Brewer
Yergey Brewing
Emmaus PA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2023 15:46
From: Dallas Archer
Subject: Long Clarification Times

Hey Matt, 

What temperature are you fining at and how are you dosing/mixing it in? 

------------------------------
Dallas Archer
Upstream Brewing Company
Omaha NE
dallasarcher@gmail.com
(402) 490-3256
------------------------------

We never had very good results with racking the beer on top of the fining agent. I would suggest trying a different dosing method to get it mixed in better. We add our finings to a brink, top up with the beer we are transferring, and then we slowly dose it in line during the transfer. This has worked better than other methods we've tried and we have bright beer in 2-7 days for most brands. 

I know others have had success adding the finings post-transfer and then using a pump to recirculate. They probably get bright beer quicker than we do but that's too many added steps for my taste and we're not in a hurry since we can tap from the racking arm to start (we're a brewpub serving from bright tanks).

I agree that initially, it sounds like an upstream problem, but I'm willing to bet it's a mixing problem. Or at least it's worth ruling out.  Otherwise, I second Rogers's suggestion of bumping up the hardness to 100 or 150 ppm and Daniel's advice regarding kettle finings. We also use Whirlfloc tablets with success but it's worth revisiting your usage rate. 

Good luck!

------------------------------
Dallas Archer
Upstream Brewing Company
Omaha NE
dallasarcher@gmail.com
(402) 490-3256
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2023 20:05
From: Matt Yergey
Subject: Long Clarification Times

Dallas,

We dose the fining into the brite prior to purging, and then transfer crashed beer (32*F) into the tank.

------------------------------
Matt Yergey
Head Brewer
Yergey Brewing
Emmaus PA
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2023 15:46
From: Dallas Archer
Subject: Long Clarification Times

Hey Matt, 

What temperature are you fining at and how are you dosing/mixing it in? 

------------------------------
Dallas Archer
Upstream Brewing Company
Omaha NE
dallasarcher@gmail.com
(402) 490-3256

Another bit of information I forgot to add that is interesting, and somewhat confounding, but may help trigger some thoughts; when we pull samples from tanks that are still hazy, they tend to drop clear on the bench in about 30 minutes, with the proteins dropping to the bottom of the glass in a fairly tight layer. Obviously the same doesn't occur in the tanks in the same timeframe.

------------------------------
Matt Yergey
Head Brewer
Yergey Brewing
Emmaus PA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 8/25/2023 9:58:00 AM
From: Matt Yergey
Subject: RE: Long Clarification Times

Another bit of information I forgot to add that is interesting, and somewhat confounding, but may help trigger some thoughts; when we pull samples from tanks that are still hazy, they tend to drop clear on the bench in about 30 minutes, with the proteins dropping to the bottom of the glass in a fairly tight layer. Obviously the same doesn't occur in the tanks in the same timeframe.

------------------------------
Matt Yergey
Head Brewer
Yergey Brewing
Emmaus PA
------------------------------

Hello Matt,

I agree with the responses from our MBAA community, and these will be very helpful in our trouble shooting on this issue.

In light of the new information provided, did anything change with your recipe and mashing processes especially your protein rest? Can you check and confirm that the materials are proteins and not glucan complexes?

The Biofine Clear dose is very high at 171 g/hl. I would suggest reducing it with optimization trials back to 90 g/hl max dose of Biofine Clear and rousing and mixing after transfer for 5 minutes if you want.                                                                                                                                                                                  

Also raise Calcium content to a minimum of 100 ppm.

Are trub levels high? Trub can bind to yeast, slow fermentation & flocculation.

Use Whirlfloc 4 to 8 grams per barrel, add at end of boil to flocculate trub, significantly reducing trub binding to yeast.

Also confirm that final gravities are according to your spec. Is fermentation also lagging? Are trub levels high? 

Confirm Wort samples for salt analysis just to confirm Calcium levels.

Also check Wort pH. High pH can affect flocculation.

Hope this helps! Keep us updated.

------------------------------
Chika Ezeani
Brew Master
Kerry, Americas Region
Beloit WI
(608) 201-9707
------------------------------