New brewer with questions about racking....

[luke5481]

I am on my fifth brew and looking to try to put down a Morgan's Canadienne Pale Ale. The kit instructions say to rack the into a secondary fermenter after the froth starts to dissipate. I have not yet bought a secondary fermenter and don't want to just yet. My understanding, from what I have read,of racking is that it mostly restricts the amount of sediment in the brew before bottling. Is this true? If so, would finings achieve the same result?

[Kevnlis]

I reckon do not rack or use finings. It is only your fifth beer and it will be good without doing these things.

Read through this thread for some good tips:

http://homebrewandbeer.com/forum/viewto ... f=2&t=1966

[luke5481]

Thanks for the advice and the link to the other thread. After reading the tips and some of the responses about experimentation, I am thinking about using Pride of Ringwood hops (25g) and oak chips (25g) with this batch. I reckon this should give it a nice woody aroma and flavor (something along the lines of what would be produced by aging in wooden kegs). Then again it might not either, it might taste and smell like crud. Thanks again for the advice and the link.

[Old Gil]

I am thinking about using Pride of Ringwood hops (25g)

25g of POR is a fair bit, I would start with less than half of that to begin with, IMHO it is terrible for anything but bittering and even then a couple of grams too much an it feels like your drinking lemon juice but a little worse. keeping in mind that your kit will have some bitterness in it. Hope this helps

[Trough Lolly]

Good call Swainy - 10 to 12g of PoR is plenty. Ramp up the levels when you've done a batch and you're happy to add more. PoR is a good hop but one that cops a lot of flak from those who try to use it like Cascade!

Cheers,
TL

[PaulSteele]

why the oak chips?

[Trough Lolly]

why the oak chips?

http://www.byo.com/mrwizard/1396.html

[36590]

More questions re racking or using finnings (Gelatin),

My brother inlaw suggested using Gelatin some time ago and we have never used it. I have since read about racking over the past week from reading posts on this forum and I find it interesting. Alot of people have tried our brew and are turned off by the sight and rather drink retail beer.

Does anyone here recommend one or the other, or to not do it at all.

We have two fermentors. Is the second fermentor suitable for racking.

[tazman67]

I have found the best thing for clearer beer is Time.
Some yeasts like So4 produce nice clear beers, but other strains are not as good.
If you have a second fermentor that would be fine for racking..

[rwh]

I don't generally use them, but finings are designed to speed up the clearing ("fining") of beer by helping to flocculate and drop out various different components. If you are going to use them correctly, you need to identify what's causing your haze and use the correct fining to drop it out. For example, yeast haze can be dropped using isinglass (gelatin), polyphenols bind to polyclar, etc. However, if your beer is properly brewed, finings should be unnecessary, especially if you can give it time to clear by itself, or if you can cold condition.

Racking can aid this natural clarification by removing the beer from the yeast cake which will eventually introduce off flavours due to yeast autolysis if the beer is left on it for too long (generally longer than a month if your temperatures are reasonable). Racking is a fairly contentious thing; some swear by it, others see it as a source of possible infection and/or oxidation. Whether you use it is up to you and what you like doing. It does have its place, but it's not a panacea and by itself it won't affect the clarity of your beer all that much. It can make bottling easier by removing the more of the yeast from the fermenter so that you stir up less of it during the bottling process. If that sounds good to you, look up "bulk priming" (essentially racking, adding priming sugar to the batch as a whole and then bottling).

Essentially, all you need to rack your beer is a second fermenter and a hose. You connect the hose to the tap of your primary fermeter and run the other end into the bottom of the secondary fermenter (trying to avoid splashing so as not to dissolve any oxygen). It's best also best to add a little sugar (say a tablespoon of dextrose boiled in a cup of water) to the secondary in order to allow the yeast to produce CO2 to purge any air from the headspace of the fermenter, again to avoid oxygen spoiling your beer or encouraging the growth of aerobic bacteria such as acetobacter).

Ultimately, if you want truly clear beer, you might need to look into filtering, but as you're probably always going to be bottle-conditioning your beer (in order to get carbonation), there will always be a slight residue of yeast, but there is that same reside in a lot of quality beers, like little creatures pale ale, the whole coopers range, etc. Eventually you might come to love the presence of the yeast, as they stabilise your beer, they provide vitamin B which reduces hangovers, and they'll slowly condition your beer, making it improve over time, just like fine wines.

From How to Brew:

Towards the end of secondary fermentation, the suspended yeast flocculates (settles out) and the beer clears. High molecular weight proteins also settle out during this stage. Tannin/phenol compounds will bind with the proteins and also settle out, greatly smoothing the taste of the beer. This process can be helped by chilling the beer, very similar to the lagering process. In the case of ales, this process is referred to as Cold Conditioning, and is a popular practice at most brewpubs and microbreweries. Cold conditioning for a week clears the beer with or without the use of finings. Fining agents, such as isinglass (fish bladders), Polyclar (plastic dust), and gelatin, are added to the fermentor to help speed the flocculation process and promote the settling of haze forming proteins and tannins. While much of the emphasis on using finings is to combat aesthetic chill haze, the real benefit of dropping those compounds is to improve the taste and stability of the beer.

[ryan]

I have found the best thing for clearer beer is Time.
Some yeasts like So4 produce nice clear beers, but other strains are not as good.
If you have a second fermentor that would be fine for racking..

There it is in a nutshell.

[Trough Lolly]

With all due respect to Mr. Palmer, he is a touch sloppy with his advice - specifically he tends to clump (pardon the pun!) isinglass and polyclar together describing them as fining solutions, but in fact, they tend to be used for rather different reasons - as Rob describes. Here's a post I made earlier that explains the differences:

Hi Dave,
Apologies for not finding this very interesting thread earlier, but are you making beer from kits or extract or grains? Having an understanding of your brewing process will help eliminate certain issues, eg protein rests if you don't mash...

FWIW, there are a number of different finings available - including kettle based finings such as the negatively charged Irish Moss (aka Carrageen), which helps knock positively charged proteins out of the wort during the boil that potentially provide chill haze in the beer. The thing to note, however, is that Irish Moss is less effective in low protein worts, such as those made from malt extract....hence my earlier question.

Many strains of yeast are poor flocculators (ie, they don't readily settle out and remain in suspension). The negatively charged yeast cells don't attract each other and remain in solution giving you a yeast based haze that filtering will remove, and as earlier posted, will also improve the flavour as well as appearance of the beer (assuming you don't want the yeast flavour to be a significant component of the beer's flavour profile). Adding some well mixed finings, such as gelatin and positively charged isinglass and will help attact the yeast in solution and as the combined finings and yeast clumps gather in size, they simply drop out of solution. Isinglass is most effective when it's used in secondary after the yeast has conditioned the beer and you are preparing the beer for serving - one suggestion from the American Brewers Guild in California is to mix Isinglass in cold water, chill the beer to just below serving temp, add isinglass, stir the brew well and let the temperature rise slightly. So, finings and filtering are good for clearing up the yeast in solution - but as I said before, this may be undesireable if the flavour of the yeast is an important component of the beers overall flavour profile. To fine with Gelatin, a teaspoon dissolved in a cup of warm water should take care of around 20L of beer that's been chilled beforehand.

Gelatin and Isinglass Finings are not effective at removing the positively charged chill haze in beer. In this instance, a negatively charged fining is needed and one such compound is silica gel. An alternative negatively charged fining is PVPP plastic which is sold under the name of Polyclar. Silica gel bonds to the proteins in the protein-tannin chill haze compound and Polyclar bonds to the polymerised polyphenols (aka tannins) of the same haze, so either does the job. Pro brewers argue that Polyclar is superior to Silica gel since Polyclar doesn't strip out the proteins in the beer which do make a positive contribution to the beer's foam whereas tannins aren't of such value in the beer.

As previous posts correctly assert, dropping the temperature of the wort will help the yeast to go dormant and flocculate out of solution - which is fine if all you want to do is remove yeast based haze caused by suspended yeast cells. No amount of temperature control, including pasteurisation, will remove the protein-tannin based chill haze that is a permanent haze in the beer (typically not noticeable at room temps), unless you add a negatively charged fining to remove the chill haze molecules and cold filter the beer.

The source thread: is here...

And apologies to Ryan for turning the nutshell into a watermelon!

Cheers,
TL

[luke5481]

Thanks to those who provided suggestions and info on my questions. If you're interested, this beer tasted pretty ordinary....actually nearly undrinkable.....it was so bad that I can't describe the taste. It was just bad. That was for the first 3 tastings - at 7, 19 and 26 days after bottling. It was that bad I left the bottles in boxes on my patio hoping that it wold go off and I could pour the bottles out and start again. I was planning to bottle my next brew on Sunday and when I was unable to, I thought that I would have a look and see what was doing with that other "beer". I had a look and surprisingly the beer had cleared considerably. I decided to test it out and bugger me it was actually not too bad. The only thing that I can think is that, apart from the normal aging process, the recent cold snap here (average temps over the past 2 weeks have been minimums of -1 and maximums of 17 (degrees celcius). Any suggestions or info would be welcome....here's the basic recipe and brewing notes.....

1x1.7KG Can Morgan’s Canadian Pale Ale – including yeast; 1x1KG Marlin Coast Home Brew Shop Dextrose; 1x1L (1.5KG) Malt Glucose or Malt Extract; 100G Marlin Coast Home Brew Shop American Oak Chips; 12G Morgan’s Pride of Ringwood Hops Infusion Bag.

I boiled 1L of water, add oak chips (to sterilize) and boiled this mixture for a further 30 minutes. Then I boiled another 1L of water, add the hops and boiled this batch for another 25 minutes. Next, I added liquids containing wood chips and hops into the fermenter with other dissolvable ingredients. I topped up the fermenter to about 24L while I stirred it like a bastard (about 30 seconds to a minute every 4 litres). Yeast pitched at about 28 degrees. OG = 1056, FG = 1011. 16 days in the fermenter before bottling and bottles were primed with 1 teaspoon of white sugar.

Cheers 'n' Beers

[Paul Beerer]

Bunnings used to sell fermenters for around $16.00
I haven't been there for a while but there cheap for racking or another brew'
You just have to a hole in the lid
cheers

[drtom]

I have two of the bunning's drums. One for racking into and the other for bulk priming.

dT.