What Does Agitating Polyclar Achieve?

[dr K]

PVPP is a process aid, it is insoluble and is used by commericial breweries (Thirsty Boy points out it , I guess as a hydrated slurry, is injected into the wort stream on its way to the filter, crikey it must work fast!) It is then filtered out. It's primary purpose is to reduce chill haze.
It clearly has some application for homebrewers, otherwise they would not use it!
It is quite easy to achieve bright beer without PVPP and filtration, even in a very short space of time.
Yeast choice helps, the Wyeast 1026 is wicked in this regard but most English yeasts will produce bright beer with only fining and some cold conditioning for a few days. The trick is to reduce the haze forming agents as much as possible pre-fermentation. Get your Calcium levels up, don't oversparge or sparge too hot, boil rapidly, use whirlfloc in the dying minutes and cool as rapidly as possible, fine with fish guts or horses hooves, condition at -1c for 48 hours and don't serve too cold !!

K

 

[Darren]

I know Darren didn't answer your question butters (although he kind of did) but I thought I did - Polyclar simply does not work till it is properly hydrated - an extended agitation time ensures that this has happened before you try to use it. Inject it into a tank... and the agitation time probably wasn't all that necessary, inject it into a wort not very far from where you are going to filter it out again... important.

Put it in an agitation tank and stir it for an extended time - it is going to work in every situation. As someone above said. They are covering all the bases.

Thirsty,

I think you are missing the point. The only reason it mixed with water is because you CANNOT pump/inject a powder. Its the same as the liquid sucrose used by the mega breweries. If you dump in a couple of tonnes of dry sucrose or PVPP it will drop to the bottom of the vessel. (As I wrote before, I have used PVPP both pre-mixed and dry. It did not make one iota of difference).

Also, are you boiling you PVPP? Otherwise how are you "sanitising" it.

cheers

Darren

 

[Bribie G]

I see that the Reject Shop have some little milkshake machines for $18 with 2 speeds, and I'm considering getting one and dedicating it for polyclar, sanitise the plastic cup and the whisk thingo - or get a pyrex lab beaker - and run it on low for a few minutes with some hottish but preboiled water and hopefully cover all bases that way.

Edit: sounds like that thread "You know you are obsessed with brewing when you...... (wander around the Reject shop evaluating every item on the basis of whether it has any use in brewing no matter how remote ....)"

 

[Leigh]

The answer to the original question is right here...from a chemists perspective, larger quantities dumped into larger vessels take longer to "wet" (hydrate), requiring a longer agitation. I'd suggest the instructions were written for the large users and nobody ever questioned them when "copied" for small users...

 

[afromaiko]

Great stuff, thanks for all the replies!

I'd suggest the instructions were written for the large users and nobody ever questioned them when "copied" for small users...

Yes it is sounding a bit like that.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thirsty,

I think you are missing the point. The only reason it mixed with water is because you CANNOT pump/inject a powder. Its the same as the liquid sucrose used by the mega breweries. If you dump in a couple of tonnes of dry sucrose or PVPP it will drop to the bottom of the vessel. (As I wrote before, I have used PVPP both pre-mixed and dry. It did not make one iota of difference).

Also, are you boiling you PVPP? Otherwise how are you "sanitising" it.

cheers

Darren

No Darren - you are wrong. PVPP is ineffective until it is hydrated. It is not hydrated properly when it is simply fully in suspension, it takes a while.

You were able to use dry PVPP effectively because you had a long enough contact time with your beer to both hydrate the powder and to have it do its job - in mega breweries, or at least the one I work in, if the powder was added dry, stirred into suspension and dosed immediately in, it would not be completely hydrated and fully at capacity by the time it made it through the system and had been filtered out - necessitating the use of more PVPP, which is really quite expensive. Back to the bang for your buck argument.

I was sanitising the PVPP by adding it to water which had just been boiled, so somewhere between 95-99 degrees... not perfect sanitation I agree, but bound to see the demise of some bacteria at least, and considering the very small likelyhood of there being significant amounts of bacteria anyway. Better than nothing was my reasoning.

I liked your reasoning better however and when filtering my Helles yesterday - I added dry PVPP (and a little silica gel) to my keg before racking into it, as per your suggestion, and it worked perfectly. Thanks.

Thirsty