Home Brewing Guide to CLEAR BEER

[Music] you may have heard the saying you eat with your eyes and if that's true then you also drink with your eyes and nothing says crisp clean and refreshing like a crystal clear brew but achieving a clear beer is not the easiest thing to do so today i'm breaking down all the ways for you to get the clearest beer possible i'm trey mucho and this is the brew show let's talk beer clarity [Music] in most cases the look of your beer doesn't really matter as long as it tastes good then i wouldn't worry too much about clarity but sometimes a certain beer begs to be clear it might be the style of beer or just your personal preference while in theory it should be easy to attain it can be a bit tricky to master but thankfully there are some important things to know about your ingredients as well as some tricks you can do to get to clear beer heaven before i jump in i'd love to hear from you does clear beer even matter do you do anything special to ensure a clear final product let me know below now let's first start at the beginning the ingredients you choose have a major impact on your beer's clarity grains that are rich in proteins like wheat oat and flaked barley which are used to improve the body and head retention can also leave behind what's called a protein haze this is a permanent cloudiness that in most cases won't go away an example of this is a hepavisin which is expected to be cloudy another ingredient that can impact clarity is yeast choice some yeast flocculate or fall out of suspension better than others if the yeast has a low flocculation rate then your beer will appear to be foggier because of the yeast floating around british and lager yeast tend to flocculate the most but you can always check your yeast provider's website to see its flocculation rate lastly when and how much hop to use impact haze the more hops you're adding the more hop debris will be in your beer but also depending on yeast choice and if you dry hop or add hops during active fermentation you'll get what's called hot bio transformation which can lead to a permanent haze in your beer many hazy brewers use a combo of all these methods to achieve the look in the new england ipas if you enjoy this type of brewing content go ahead and hit subscribe for more simplified home brewing videos so now that we have an understanding of what to avoid if we're trying to make a clear beer let's talk about what we can do to improve our chances of ultimate clarity starting on the brew day outside of those ingredient choices there are a few things you can do some people claim that a short mash time can lead to a haze in a beer but i haven't seen that to be true in my experience but if you're trying to check all the clarity boxes you can extend the match time to a full 60 minutes the next thing to look at is near the end of the boil and what are called kettle findings kettle findings are used to clump up proteins and drop them out of your wart toward the bottom in the hopes that it will lead to a clearer beer there are a few options here but most common are irish moss and wolflock tablets irish moss is actually a type of algae that has carrageenan a negatively charged component that attracts those proteins world flock also has irish moss in it as well as additional carrageenans they both work about the same although we're flock is easier to use since it's pre-portioned and all you need to do is drop it in around the 15-minute mark these products are also said to reduce chill haze which is a haze in your beer that can come about when you go to lower your final beer temp down to serving range this can be hard to remove so adding one of these is highly recommended another way to improve clarity on brew day is to chill your work down as fast as possible the faster you chill the greater chance you'll have for a good cold break which is when all those proteins again clump together and fall to the bottom of the truck you'll see this happen as you start to chill your wart it kind of looks a bit like miso soup down there and that's a good sign basically on brew day you're doing everything you can to minimize the amount of proteins in suspension so you have less work to do later to get clear beer now let's talk post fermentation as long as you picked a good flocculating yeast and didn't add a buttload of hops the next step should help you out the first thing people might tell you is to cold crash your beer to get the clearest beer possible into your keg cold crashing is where you chill your fermented beer down to just above freezing to get all the yeast to drop to the bottom and this certainly works but it's hard to do unless you have a dedicated fermentation chamber or freezer but honestly i haven't noticed much of a difference between cold crashing and just putting room temp beer into my keg eventually they'll both get chilled down and the yeast will fall out but in the keg you'll just get an extra pint or so at the beginning of yeast so don't stress if you can't cold crash yet probably the easiest cheapest and best way to get clear beer is thanks to father time giving your beer a few extra weeks in cold storage or what's also called lagering is how brewers have been getting clear beer for years it's just like cold crashing the chilled beer helps the yeast slowly fall to the bottom and in turn creates a clearer beer plus waiting a little longer can help the beer smooth out and clean up any off flavors that might be lingering around but i get it who wants to wait weeks or even months for beer not me so that's where clarifying agents come into play there are a bunch of options for finding your finished beer but i'll talk about some of the most popular they mostly all work the same they bind proteins yeasts and polyphenols in the beer and drop them to the bottom you can add them into the keg before or after racking your beer in and within a few days you should be golden probably the one you'll see used most on the homebrew scale is gelatin gelatin if you didn't know is basically boiled skin bones and tendons of animals usually cows pigs or even horses and while it's cheap and works very well to clear your beer i prefer not to have animal parts in my beer there's also eisenglass which is made from fish bladders again also works well but my preferred choice is bio fine clear which is made of acilistic acid and is used by a lot of professional breweries it does lean a bit more expensive than the other options but it works wonders at getting clear beer faster another popular option is a combo of kaido sand and kieselsol you may have seen these sold together as super clear you add in the keso saw on day one and then you add the kaito sand on day two since they're oppositely charged they'll work together to help pull everything out of suspension oh and if you're curious kaido sand is made from crustaceans and ketosol is a silicic acid based product just like biofine lastly i want to touch on a few other clarifiers that are more common in wine mead and cider making first up is sparkloid which is a powder made from diatomaceous earth and a few other things and bentonite which is made from clay they both help with clarity and are oppositely charged so if you use one and don't get the results you want you can always try the other and finally i'll mention pectic enzyme this works well in wines or ciders or even if you add fruit to your beer pectin found naturally in some fruits will create a haze in your final product and pectic enzyme will break that down resulting in a crystal clear beverage one final option i'll add is filtration i don't have a ton experience with it but i know some other brewers that use it all the time with great results so if none of the above works for you you can always try to manually filter out that haze unless you're brewing for a competition or you just want to show off your top-notch beer clarity isn't vital but it does add that nice finishing touch you did all that hard work to brew an amazing tasting beer why not just take it to the next level and hopefully you now know a little bit more about how to do it if there's anything else about clarity i missed or something you want me to cover in a future video let me know i hope you got something out of this video and if you did be sure to hit the like button on your way out thanks for watching cheers and happy brewing [Music] [Music] you

Channel: TheBruSho

Views: 27,643

Keywords: beer clarity, beer fining agents, clear beer, how to get clear beer, clarity in beer, biofine, biofine clear, whirlfloc tablet, whirlfloc vs irish moss, irish moss, clarifying beer, clear beer with gelatin, chitosan, kieselsol, pectic enzymes, pectic enzyme wine, sparkelloid, bentonite clay, bentonite wine, tips for clear beer, tricks to clear beer, home brew clear beer, homebrew

Id: PK33TIuM6ds

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 06 2021