Brewing a clear west coast IPA
Brewing a clear west coast IPA
My first Lemmy post!
I’m very keen to see this community grow. I’m traditionally a reader not a poster but that is not what we need now!
I’m brewing a west coast ipa this weekend. Dank, resiny goodness, and about 6.5%.
I make good ipa, but it’s always hazy - due to the high rate of dry hopping (not other reasons - I can brew crystal beers of other styles).
For this one I’m going to try an extended cold crash at 2 deg C, followed by biofine at the upper end of the recommended dosage. 2 dry hop additions of 7g/l each, on day 1 and day 6. Hop pellets are added through a hop dropper, loose. Whirfloc in the boil too, but don’t think it’ll help with hop haze.
Any other ideas? We’ve tried a few different fining agents with limited success.
Looked good pre yeast addition 🍻
Well, lad. That's some fine looking equipment ye got there.
Thanks. After 10+ years with a cobbled together setup we did a big upgrade and have a much nicer kit now.
To update - very happy with the result, 2ml/L of Biofine did wonders. Crystal clear after 12g/l dry hop.
That looks great. Is the flavour where you want it to be or where you expected it?
Yep I’m really happy with it. My efficiency was a bit low so it came in at 5.5%, that’s all I’ll tweak next time
I've always been a strong believer in cold + time to get crystal clear beers. That being said, some grain bills have a harder time than others dropping clear. Care to post your recipe so we can have a look at it?
Yeah I think that’s our best bet. Recipe here - https://share.brewfather.app/EOJKRcXCj4dZrH
Yeah I don't forsee any clarity issues with that grain bill. I assume the Voyager Craft Malt VOODOO Schooner is a crystal malt? Nice simple grain bill as a West Coast IPA should be. You could probably simplify the hop schedules to get your desired IBUs from a nice big 60 minute addition and shift more of the aroma hops towards flameout (but that's just my opinion as an inherently lazy brewer).
Try different yeast strains. This is easiest way to clarify beer. I usually don't mind hazy beers but when I tried to make it more clear it was matter of changing yeasts.
Good call - I’m using up different strains in this one, m44 and us05 so fingers crossed. Us05 is my go to
Short of filtering, you're doing all you can. Should be great. It's my favorite to brew
Yeah I’m also filtering, but it doesn’t touch hop haze
A lot of people swear by gelatine, but I'm assuming you've tried that and had about as much success as I have (not much). Apart from cold and time as another user mentioned, have you considered just dry hopping less? Back in the heyday of crystal clear West Coast IPAs those hopping rates would have been considered crazy, even though they're mediocre these days.
Yep, I think I’m in denial, and dropping the dry hop rate is probably the answer. Maybe combined with cryo/lupomax hops or extract products to reduce how much vegetal matter goes in.
This one has 14g/L total dry hop so it is pretty high.
I've given this a bit of thought from a chemical point of view. The issue here might not be just due to the amount of vegetal matter. I'd expect you to see this if you were to use extracts for the equivalent amount of alpha acids.
Just on a quick search, alpha acids seem to have a pKa (read lower for why this matters) of about 5-5.5 and a solubility in water of about 60 mg per liter at 100 C (and lower at room temps). source
Without going too much into chemistry, if your pH is lower than the pKa, you're more likely in this case to have less solubility (based on the ratio of ionized/molecular forms). Higher pH than pKa - more solubility. Same pH as pKa - about half and half.
Solubility would be helped by alcohol content though, but at 6.5% ABV you wouldn't see it going up that much. 14 g of a 10% AA hop would yield about 1.4 g alpha acids if my math is right.
(If you have the time and the disposition for such a test you could dilute some vodka to your ABV - about 100 mL should do it and add 1.4 g of your hops and see what it looks like. Then try different alcohol concentrations and see if you get any better results. You could also, for the hell of it proceed to pH adjust the mix and see if you get anything clear at a drinkable pH)
Solubility issues would present themselves as the well known haze. (for an extreme example see Ouzo + water) Removing it would also be slightly more difficult (even with filtration) and would probably have the side effect of removing the things you want in there.
Also, your water chemistry would influence said solubility - for example the amount of magnesium ions.
Note - all of this just takes into account alpha acids in water/alcohol. It becomes way more complex when thinking of all the other stuff present in beer. Which is to say that you may have a hard time obtaining a crystal clear beer with a huge amount of dry hopping.
TL;DR - chemistry wall of text; RDWHAHB