Floaties, Like or Dislike!?

That beer was brewed once and released about 11 weeks ago, I had a few four packs fresh and didn't have floaties. I just looked back at my photos. Its pretty hazy, but not nearly as much as some of the other hazy stuff out there.

Does age/settling add to the floaty potential? I'm asking, not making assumptions.

 

Yikes! Surprised it still tasted good.

 

Yes. As the beer is given more time, more yeast will fall out of suspension.

 

Yeah, kind of what I figured. I enjoyed when fresh.

Getting back to OP original question. I would prefer my beer to not look like a snow globe, but if a beer I really enjoy looks that way I probably would still buy it. I have had a few big hazy NE style IPA's that had a ton of floaties and hop residue ending up in the bottom of my glass. Not visually appealing, but I didn't think it effected the flavor.

 

While I agree with the sentiment behind this I disagree that "most" craft beer is "unfiltered" and "bottle conditioned". On the whole, by volume, there's far more filtered than unfiltered beer - and certainly less "bottle conditioned" beer (meaning actually bottle-conditioned, not just having residual yeast in the bottle) than some might expect.

As for floaties, they're a big turn off for me as well. I don't like "milkshake" beers either, and to be honest, I'm sometimes a little hesitant when I get a beer that's got a lot of yeast in it for fear of what it might do to my digestive system a little later on!

 

This seems to be the opinion of a lot of people, but I just can't get on board with it. I want my beers to look as inviting as they taste. Had the hardest time giving into the NEIPA "thing", but now I'm OK with it and brew them all the time at home. That said, none of my beers look like a snow globe or have chunks in them. They just look very, very hazy.

 

True. The visual appeal plays a big part and I don't experience a ton of floaties. If it becomes a norm, my opinion may change.

 

That's an important distinction to make, IMO.

And, yes, most craft beer is certainly filtered or centrifuged. It's just most small craft breweries don't do this with certain styles of beer, like NEIPAs.

You'll be just fine. Unless you have a slow digestive tract and you eat a lot of simple sugars. Even then, brewers yeast is the least of your worries.

 

Pretty sure no one "likes", as in prefers, floaties. If I'm rating on UT, it's a .25 or .5 deduction but not enough to ruin a beer.

I'm open to NE-style beers being hazy to opaque, but I reserve the right to find something ugly even if the brewer intended it. It would have to be pretty bad to turn me off from a great smelling/tasting beer, though. I consider visual appeal to be 3rd or 4th priority at best.

 

Practically all the beer I;ve drunk over the last 55 years has been unfiltered and unpasteurised.It has always, when properly cared for, been water bright.

 

The NEIPA sensation hasn't hit over there yet, has it?

 

Had some beer at a local brewery where they used an extra 8 lb of hops per barrel.It had a slight haze but wasn't cloudy.Wasn;t that bitter either if I recall.

 

This ^^^

 

By using a clarifier such as isinglass in the brewing process and then serving the beer as cask beer (fresh) you have removed the biggest particles and removed one of the biggest threats to beer stability (time). Without the use of stabilizers/clarifiers and put in a bottle I'm guessing that the same beers would display some haze. In homebrewing the sediment sinks to the bottom of the fermenting vessel. Some might be carried over to the bottle and some is generated by the bottle fermentation, and once the bottle is tipped the sediment is disturbed and you end up with a hazy glass of beer if you pour too much. But if the beer is in a barrel and left in a level position the sediment has time to settle and the beer is drawn above the largely undisturbed sediment. It also helps if the beer isn't served ice cold (which cask ale isn't I understand?). Basically cask ale benefits from clarifiers, gravity and temperature. Lager beer used to be served in casks too where some of the sediment, or "geläger", was deposed already in the lagering barrels over a prolonged lagering period, then the beer was transferred to a smaller serving cask and allowed to settle in a horizontal position before tapping the barrel horizontally. That way more of the sediment could settle at the bottom of the serving cask and leave as bright of a beer as possible. With bottling or canning. and shelf lives beyond days or weeks you run into different problems which have to be solved via filtering.

On the shelf of my local monopoly there are a plethora of craft beers which are unfiltered and look like snow globes after a few months on the shelf, while you can find macro beers which remain crystal clear up to a year after bottling or canning. It's worth keeping in mind when people describe the historical difference between 6-row and 2-row beer, 2-row beer isn't immune to haze or particles when it is bottled and stored for a prolonged period of time.

 

Not cornflakes sized.

 

I really want to agree with you here, but I just can't. Smell and taste are certainly of paramount importance, but when someone brings me a beer that looks like a chunky glass of grapefruit juice, I'm going to be put off.

 

I am not put off by floaties and I do not think ill if they are present. But I can say that I would prefer not to have them present. It took me quite a while to go from "oh crap, down the hatch" to "well it is just part of the experience of drinking that particular brew."

 

It might have been in the American "Northeast" IPA style. They are always pale and unfiltered, but haze can vary from light to turbid. They typically have very low bitterness, despite heavy hop use, because most or all of the hops are added at the very end of the boil to get the light citrusy aroma/flavor without the bitterness (dry-hopping). In fact, a common criticism [from curmudgeons like me] is many taste and appear more like sweet citrus juice or fruit smoothies than beer. In typical American fashion the NEIPA is an extreme take to a style usually without any subtlety or nuance*, but can still taste very good in a uni-dimensional way.

* - I am sure some people would disagree with me here, and while there are always outliers I think it's hard to argue that the NEIPA style is not dominated by sweet citrus bombs.

 

It would be very hard, indeed, to pull off that argument successfully.

 

A slight nuance but the majority of the so called 'NE' style IPAs that I have consumed had more of a tropical fruit aroma/flavor profile vs. citrus.

One common trait is a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.

Cheers!