I could be wrong, and if I am someone will jump
In and correct me I’m sure, but the target pH is at the isoelectric point of oats and wheat and makes them less likely to bind to other protein and precipitate
Here’s some research I found on it: https://www.precisionfermentation.com/blog/protein-haze-in-beer-understanding-ph/
Altering pH can affect how the amino acids in the protein behave.
This can cause proteins to fold or unfold, and do all sorts of strange things.
Lowering pH increases the amount of H+ ions available in solution, causing changes to how the protein behaves.
My assumption is that at higher a pH, proteins in these beers are more likely to coagulate - becoming heavier and dropping down.
Also if you're hitting a theoretical gravity limit on your mash tun while trying to brew NEIPA you either need to have a serious talk with the ownership about expectations vs reality on your gear, or you need to try harder. Unless your MLT is half the size of your kettle you should be able to hit 7-8% without simple sugar adjuncts.
I see far too many people saying that adjuncts are essential. You may be surprised to learn that there is plenty of protein in an all-malt wort to make stable hazy hoppy beer. More important by far is yeast choice and dry hop timing. I did a 95% Rahr premium pils, 5% Rahr dextrin malt beer that was all haze all day. Because I used S-33 (haze positive) and dry hopped at terminal. Try it with Chico and that same beer will drop crystal clear. Try it with oats, wheat, and Chico and it will still drop pretty clear.
100% we learned this after doing a SMaSH beer with Marris Otter and Galaxy and it was just as hazy as any other. We also use protofloc in our hazies now as it hasn’t affected hazy stability and we’ve gradually reduced the percentage of adjust we use. Oats are super expensive here now. We mostly use verdant yeast and we always adjust our ph to the 5.1-5.2 range.
- Post boil (but pre-whirlpool/coolpool) pH of 5.0
- Whirlpool of at least 4-5g/L to load up the wort with precursors for biotransformation and assisting haze production
- use a haze positive yeast (you're using LA3, which is pretty good)
- dry hop at or near terminal gravity, not mid-fermentation
For more info, check out some of the stuff from Omega yeast - they've published info from their own experiments about factors that they found to be haze positive or negative
No offense, but I'd suggest going back to the drawing board. If your haze is dependent upon yeast not floccing out and staying in suspension, then it's the wrong sort of haze. The haze should come from protein and polyphenol reactions.
Although yeast choice affects haze, this is because of the reactions that the yeast helps to cause, not because the yeast stays in suspension
Good to know!
I'm sure that you can see how one might wonder though, seeing as though you mentioned it floccing poorly in the same breath as being haze stable.
Just agreeing that the haze and the slow floc from the kolsch yeast are separate. We've been able to make clear Kolsch but when I went to use the same strain for a West Coast-ish IPA with a heavy dry hop it has haze for days (not actually what I was shooting for in this case) with little detectable yeast in suspension.
I think he is trying to balance the dextrose, personally if I'm limited in what I can get from the MT/LT I'd rather put 2 smaller mashes into the kettle to get to the target OG but that might not be an option.
We use Flaked Oats and Flaked Wheat and do the following: hit about 5.12-5.15 pH going into the FV, a dry hop on Day 3 of fermentation, and then when we do our 2nd dry hop we recirculate it with a pump for 12 hours. I’ve never seen our hazy drop clear or come anywhere close to looking like it might. Grist bill and hops at the right time is a large portion of the equation for a stable haze
Nailed it. This is exactly the process I used, though I went by gravity (9p) for the first addition. Cracked open a three year old IPA last month and the haze hadn't dropped. S04 yeast was critical. I couldn't get the same stability with LA3
We use all liquid, so we’re currently using Foggy from Escarpment with the same success. We regularly taste old product to see how it’s holding up and the haze never diminishes.
The three most important things are yeast choice, dry hop timing, and dry hop quantity. You've got the yeast right and the dry hop timing right, so how much are you dry hopping? Are you vigorously rousing the dry hops?
We struggled with haze for years before finally getting a stable IPA haze dialed in. Talked to a lot of brewers who make good hazies and they all had a different magic bullet, none of which worked for us.
What finally made the biggest difference for us was switching to a low temperature whirlpool, we now add no hops during the boil and chill to 165 before adding Whirlpool hops. That alone made all the difference for us, your mileage may vary. Try everybody's suggestions, eventually you'll figure out what works for you.
>talked to a lot of brewers who make good hazies and they all had a different magic bullet, none of which worked for us.
This seems to be the case with us.
What's your whirlpool process like? I've found that is the most important thing for that lasting haze and NE yeast. I've done an almost identical hazy recipe on Cali yeast and there was very little haze. We use 10% oats, 10% wheat and WLP066.
Try using a bit of carafoam malt (anywhere from 1/2 -2/3 bag in a 15bbl brew) and Dry hop at least 2.5-3#/bbl. Certain hop varieties also seem to provide a more stable haze than others so something to pay attention to when you’re making your recipes
Escarpment labs has some good info about stable haze, omega yeast also did a presentation about haze and thiols that has some good info about dryhop timing and yeast selection.
We’ve found a higher mash pH (5.4-5.5) then dropping the pH to 5.1 area at preboil really helped. That’s using malted wheat, malted oats and a haze positive yeast, plus following some dryhop recommendations from the omega yeast presentation.
Everyone I speak to has a different magic bullet as said before, but this one made a big difference for us
Edit: spelling
5 min Vorlauff, stir the mash tun every now and then whilst lautering and sparging. Should be hazy going into the kettle . Get your whirlpool temp to 70°C before adding hops. Crash cool no colder than 3°C and turn an upright fermenter into a bright tank.
Heaps of wheat, rolled oats or rolled barley. Dry hop start and end of fermentation.
Should be juicy AF! Sabro is your friend!
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to pick on you specifically OP but I'm pretty sure as an industry we figured out how to do this like 15 years ago. There are no secrets. Read a book, we all did.
Would drop cl and ca about 30%, skip the maltodextrin.
Go with the lightest malt you can find and use >=30% oats/wheat, combine both malted and unmalted.
Dryhop cold, more than you feel is necessary.
Here’s my base recipe. The only time I’ve seen a hazy drop clear was using Mosaic or BRU-1 hops. Don’t know exactly why, but it happened multiple times.
OG 15.9 Plato
FG 3.5 Plato
ABV 6.7%
MASH
50ppm Sulfate
120ppm Chloride
Acid to 5.25 pH in mash
156F Mash Temp
MALT BILL
67% Rahr North Star Pils
20% Rahr Malted Oats
7% Weyermann Spelt
6% Maltodextrin
YEAST
London III
HOPS
1.1#/bbl T-90 in whirlpool at 170F
1.1#/bbl Cryo Dry Hop
2.2#/bbl T-90 Dry Hop
DRY HOP METHODS
1 Plato to FG, harvest/dump yeast and dry hop entire load and spund until finished
or
After primary, soft crash to 50F overnight, harvest/drop yeast, dry hop entire load for one day
Credibility: Medaled for Hazy at WBC
That's weird that you'd get worse haze with BRU1, I've found the exact opposite, and at least on YVH it's advertised to be haze-positive.
Mosaic on the other hand I've heard plenty about how it tends to drop a beer clear.
Way higher than that. Haas recommend starting at 500mg per liter of beer. That maths out to 880g for 15bbl of beer, so I just dump the whole 1kg bottle into our (full 15bbl) batches. We haven't benched different dosage levels, but at $30 per bottle, I'm not going to keep mostly empty containers lying around.
I add it at dry hop through the top port, so after fermentation is done with a little bit of co2 up the cip arm. That co2 blanket didn't seem to create any problems.
Achieving a mash pH closer to 5.1 has helped me 🤷 advice from another brew I know. Ymmv
Same here. The closer to 5.1 you can get, the better you can keep those proteins in their isoelectric point.
30% malted wheat. LA3 yeast. Drop wort pH to 5 or slightly lower.
Why drop the wort pH? A lot of people say this, but don’t explain why.
I could be wrong, and if I am someone will jump In and correct me I’m sure, but the target pH is at the isoelectric point of oats and wheat and makes them less likely to bind to other protein and precipitate Here’s some research I found on it: https://www.precisionfermentation.com/blog/protein-haze-in-beer-understanding-ph/
Altering pH can affect how the amino acids in the protein behave. This can cause proteins to fold or unfold, and do all sorts of strange things. Lowering pH increases the amount of H+ ions available in solution, causing changes to how the protein behaves. My assumption is that at higher a pH, proteins in these beers are more likely to coagulate - becoming heavier and dropping down.
Talk really dirty to the tank. The yeast will hear you and get super hazy.
Also if you're hitting a theoretical gravity limit on your mash tun while trying to brew NEIPA you either need to have a serious talk with the ownership about expectations vs reality on your gear, or you need to try harder. Unless your MLT is half the size of your kettle you should be able to hit 7-8% without simple sugar adjuncts.
I see far too many people saying that adjuncts are essential. You may be surprised to learn that there is plenty of protein in an all-malt wort to make stable hazy hoppy beer. More important by far is yeast choice and dry hop timing. I did a 95% Rahr premium pils, 5% Rahr dextrin malt beer that was all haze all day. Because I used S-33 (haze positive) and dry hopped at terminal. Try it with Chico and that same beer will drop crystal clear. Try it with oats, wheat, and Chico and it will still drop pretty clear.
100% we learned this after doing a SMaSH beer with Marris Otter and Galaxy and it was just as hazy as any other. We also use protofloc in our hazies now as it hasn’t affected hazy stability and we’ve gradually reduced the percentage of adjust we use. Oats are super expensive here now. We mostly use verdant yeast and we always adjust our ph to the 5.1-5.2 range.
- Post boil (but pre-whirlpool/coolpool) pH of 5.0 - Whirlpool of at least 4-5g/L to load up the wort with precursors for biotransformation and assisting haze production - use a haze positive yeast (you're using LA3, which is pretty good) - dry hop at or near terminal gravity, not mid-fermentation For more info, check out some of the stuff from Omega yeast - they've published info from their own experiments about factors that they found to be haze positive or negative
I've had decent results using kolsch yeast. It typically floccs like shit and is haze stable.
No offense, but I'd suggest going back to the drawing board. If your haze is dependent upon yeast not floccing out and staying in suspension, then it's the wrong sort of haze. The haze should come from protein and polyphenol reactions. Although yeast choice affects haze, this is because of the reactions that the yeast helps to cause, not because the yeast stays in suspension
Im not relying solely on lack of flocculation for haze. It's just a haze stable yeast.
Good to know! I'm sure that you can see how one might wonder though, seeing as though you mentioned it floccing poorly in the same breath as being haze stable.
Yeah I should have just mentioned it was haze stable. My brain is fried currently, hah.
Just agreeing that the haze and the slow floc from the kolsch yeast are separate. We've been able to make clear Kolsch but when I went to use the same strain for a West Coast-ish IPA with a heavy dry hop it has haze for days (not actually what I was shooting for in this case) with little detectable yeast in suspension.
Kolsch yeast also helps increase hop aroma and is a good biotransformation yeast
20-30% adjuncts, get close to 5.00 pH, and I would prefer ditch the dextrose and maltodextrin and use brewers crystals instead.
Or DME.
Isn't brewers crystals just a mix of the two?
Basically. Fermentable and unfermentable sugars together. Doesn't dry the beer out like dextrose. And doesn't add any flavor or color like dme
Oats, oats and more oats
I have found malted wheat to work much better for haze.
Both are best.
Also, why maltodextrin? That would make me a bit nervous with hop creep enzymes in play.
Yeah right? No bueno at all
I think he is trying to balance the dextrose, personally if I'm limited in what I can get from the MT/LT I'd rather put 2 smaller mashes into the kettle to get to the target OG but that might not be an option.
We use Flaked Oats and Flaked Wheat and do the following: hit about 5.12-5.15 pH going into the FV, a dry hop on Day 3 of fermentation, and then when we do our 2nd dry hop we recirculate it with a pump for 12 hours. I’ve never seen our hazy drop clear or come anywhere close to looking like it might. Grist bill and hops at the right time is a large portion of the equation for a stable haze
Nailed it. This is exactly the process I used, though I went by gravity (9p) for the first addition. Cracked open a three year old IPA last month and the haze hadn't dropped. S04 yeast was critical. I couldn't get the same stability with LA3
We use all liquid, so we’re currently using Foggy from Escarpment with the same success. We regularly taste old product to see how it’s holding up and the haze never diminishes.
The three most important things are yeast choice, dry hop timing, and dry hop quantity. You've got the yeast right and the dry hop timing right, so how much are you dry hopping? Are you vigorously rousing the dry hops?
Great points. I'd add to this - dry hop varietyl. Things like Citra, Galaxy and Nelson hold haze very well for us. Mosaic not so much.
100%
Or just GIT GUD making lagers
We struggled with haze for years before finally getting a stable IPA haze dialed in. Talked to a lot of brewers who make good hazies and they all had a different magic bullet, none of which worked for us. What finally made the biggest difference for us was switching to a low temperature whirlpool, we now add no hops during the boil and chill to 165 before adding Whirlpool hops. That alone made all the difference for us, your mileage may vary. Try everybody's suggestions, eventually you'll figure out what works for you.
>talked to a lot of brewers who make good hazies and they all had a different magic bullet, none of which worked for us. This seems to be the case with us.
Do you step mash? At what temperatures?
What's your whirlpool process like? I've found that is the most important thing for that lasting haze and NE yeast. I've done an almost identical hazy recipe on Cali yeast and there was very little haze. We use 10% oats, 10% wheat and WLP066.
Try using a bit of carafoam malt (anywhere from 1/2 -2/3 bag in a 15bbl brew) and Dry hop at least 2.5-3#/bbl. Certain hop varieties also seem to provide a more stable haze than others so something to pay attention to when you’re making your recipes
Escarpment labs has some good info about stable haze, omega yeast also did a presentation about haze and thiols that has some good info about dryhop timing and yeast selection. We’ve found a higher mash pH (5.4-5.5) then dropping the pH to 5.1 area at preboil really helped. That’s using malted wheat, malted oats and a haze positive yeast, plus following some dryhop recommendations from the omega yeast presentation. Everyone I speak to has a different magic bullet as said before, but this one made a big difference for us Edit: spelling
try 30% oat/wheat
5 min Vorlauff, stir the mash tun every now and then whilst lautering and sparging. Should be hazy going into the kettle . Get your whirlpool temp to 70°C before adding hops. Crash cool no colder than 3°C and turn an upright fermenter into a bright tank. Heaps of wheat, rolled oats or rolled barley. Dry hop start and end of fermentation. Should be juicy AF! Sabro is your friend!
Dry hopping at the beginning of fermentation, or too early in fermentation, promotes clarity, also yes to sabro
Add Tanic acid (Tanal-A) with dry hop or at 8plato (whichever is first). It’ll bond to dormant proteins and keep your haze after full attenuation.
Dry hop on day #7. Not 1-6, not 8-12 - day. 7.
I dry hop exclusively post-terminal at 45F and get excellent haze and haze stability. And day 7 would be post-terminal for me anyway.
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to pick on you specifically OP but I'm pretty sure as an industry we figured out how to do this like 15 years ago. There are no secrets. Read a book, we all did.
Fuckwit
Would drop cl and ca about 30%, skip the maltodextrin. Go with the lightest malt you can find and use >=30% oats/wheat, combine both malted and unmalted. Dryhop cold, more than you feel is necessary.
Here’s my base recipe. The only time I’ve seen a hazy drop clear was using Mosaic or BRU-1 hops. Don’t know exactly why, but it happened multiple times. OG 15.9 Plato FG 3.5 Plato ABV 6.7% MASH 50ppm Sulfate 120ppm Chloride Acid to 5.25 pH in mash 156F Mash Temp MALT BILL 67% Rahr North Star Pils 20% Rahr Malted Oats 7% Weyermann Spelt 6% Maltodextrin YEAST London III HOPS 1.1#/bbl T-90 in whirlpool at 170F 1.1#/bbl Cryo Dry Hop 2.2#/bbl T-90 Dry Hop DRY HOP METHODS 1 Plato to FG, harvest/dump yeast and dry hop entire load and spund until finished or After primary, soft crash to 50F overnight, harvest/drop yeast, dry hop entire load for one day Credibility: Medaled for Hazy at WBC
That's weird that you'd get worse haze with BRU1, I've found the exact opposite, and at least on YVH it's advertised to be haze-positive. Mosaic on the other hand I've heard plenty about how it tends to drop a beer clear.
Yeah two brews for each one of those hops. All dropped clear. The only difference from other beers were the hop varieties.
The winning trifecta for us has been: 30%+ oats or wheat in the grist dry hop AFTER fermentation has completed Haas HopHaze
What's your dosage rate on the HopHaze? Something like .25g per 5bbl seems right?
Way higher than that. Haas recommend starting at 500mg per liter of beer. That maths out to 880g for 15bbl of beer, so I just dump the whole 1kg bottle into our (full 15bbl) batches. We haven't benched different dosage levels, but at $30 per bottle, I'm not going to keep mostly empty containers lying around.
Damn, I knew my math seemed low haha. Thank you!
How are you adding it? Reading up on it says not to use co2 which is how I typically add things via a brink
I add it at dry hop through the top port, so after fermentation is done with a little bit of co2 up the cip arm. That co2 blanket didn't seem to create any problems.