Keeping a wheat beer cloudy ?

[Beerisyummy]

Hi All,

I've been doing a bit of searching on this subject and have yet to find any answers beyond shaking my keg or bottle before serving.

Is there any other way to go about keeping the beer cloudy like the stuff I buy in a bottle. It sits for weeks and never drops clear like my creations do.

I'm always happy to do a bit of reading if someone could steer me in the right direction.

Cheers.
Ross.

 

[carniebrew]

Which yeast are you using in your wheats? How long are you leaving it in the primary? Are you doing kits, extract or AG? If boiling, are you using Irish Moss?

I use 3068 mostly, don't use any finings (kettle or otherwise), and bottle it pretty much straight after it's reached my expected FG. Once the beer has cleared a bit with age, I turn it upside down and swirl before opening, then when pouring I leave the last 50ml or so in the bottle, give it a good swirl, then pour the rest, and it goes back to being really cloudy.

 

[RelaxedBrewer]

It depends on the type of wheat beer. Raw wheats contain proteins that create haze. As long as you don't rest in the protein rest range that clears the beer you should maintain haze.

Wheat beers like Hefes do not contain raw wheat and get their haze from the yeast. These are harder to keep clear in a keg but with the bottle you can just poor the yeast in with the beer.

I obviuosly don't know what type of wheat beer you are making but adding some or more raw wheat may help to keep it cloudy.

 

[TidalPete]

A celebrated Gumpy brewer advises adding a tablespoon of Spelt flour @ 5 minutes to a typical Wit so I would imagine that the same advice would apply to any kind of German Weizen (unless planning to filter)?

In the absence of Spelt I reckon any wheat plain flour would suffice?
Meant to do this on Wednesday before pitching my 3944 but forgot to do so when adding lime zest & coriander at the same time.

 

[mxd]

drink it quicker

 

[Beerisyummy]

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the late reply but the multi quote function doesn't seem to work any more and the only reply I saw in my email was " Drink it quicker". Thanks MXD.
No problems in that regard! I'm definitely in the borderline alcoholic category and my 70% pale wheaty is not helping.

Tidal,
I like your advice and might give it a go next time. I had considered saving the super fine dust from the mill and adding that later on in the boiling process. It's great to hear that 5 minutes should help introduce some haze.
When I try it out I'll report back on my findings.
I might even hit you up for some advice on the lime zest and coriander. I've never used anything apart from malt, hops, sugar and water.

PS. Is that Gumpy, like "run Forest, run" or did you mean Grumpy?

Relaxed Brewer,
I have developed a taste for the high rotation Shofferhofer they sell at my local bottle. The cloudy one, not the Kristal.
The last few batches have been a pretty close match and they use 70% BB wheat, 30% Pilsner ( whichever I have at the time) and Hallertau.
Even though I'm not using the raw wheat, I have been just adding cold filtered water at mash in and letting the new setup ramp to mashing temps. That could explain why they are clearing so damned well lately.
I need some more wheat malt so I can test out a few of these ideas. Happy to add some raw wheat to the shopping list.

Carniebrew,
I'm using the WY 3068. I've cultured it up a fair few times now so it's probably not quite the same as the original WY offering, but it is still resulting in similar characteristics to the original smack pack.
I stopped using finings in my beers a fair few batches ago. I don't really see the difference at this stage in my brewing career.
I've been doing exactly the same thing as you with the bottling/kegging of my wheat beers. They taste so good when they're about two weeks out of the fermenter.
:chug:


Thanks for all the ideas guys!

 

[seamad]

Some breweries use wyeast Tanal A to help keep turbidity. Haven't tried it myself as you can only get commercial quantities ( afaik), making it expensive.

 

[TidalPete]

PS. Is that Gumpy, like "run Forest, run" or did you mean Grumpy?

Haha Beerisyummy. Gumpy is merely local wordspeak for Gympie in Qld.

As re the additions of lime zest I'm afraid that I am just a novice here (First attempt with limes). Another brewer far more proficient at this sort of stuff gave me the advice of 1.0g/litre & that is just hoping really because ALL CITRUS can vary due to factors of growth, climate, size, etc so it seems to be more of a fine-tuning thing with the materials at hand.
Hope this is of help?

PS -- I have a (Frozen) container of Seville (Bitter orange) juice in my freezer. I am reasonably familiar with the grams of Seville peel to add at 5 minutes but unsure what measure of juice to add?
Any help welcome.

 

[verysupple]

I'm not sure how true it is, but it's said that some brewers filter out the yeast used for fermentation and add a powdery lager yeast for bottle conditioning. These yeasts tend to be less flocculent and stay in suspension better giving the desired uniform turbidity.