Does anyone here brew commercially?

Discussion in 'Homebrewing' started by TooHopTooHandle, May 16, 2019.

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  1. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,375) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
    Society Pooh-Bah

    How does water hardness impact haze (protein-polyphenol complexes) staying in suspension? Do you have any technical articles you can reference (e.g., link) on this topic?

    Cheers!
     
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  2. TooHopTooHandle

    TooHopTooHandle Initiate (0) Dec 20, 2016 New York

    Yes I do add salts to my mash. I was thinking that might be the problem. I might buy 130 gallons of distilled water and give that a shot and keep everything else the same to see if that fixes it. Will a water filter help with the hardness or would RO be the only way to fix it.
     
  3. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,375) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
    Society Pooh-Bah

    A water filter will not remove water minerals.

    Cheers!

    P.S. I have homebrewed Juicy/Hazy IPAs using my filtered tap water which has a hardness of 324 mg/L with no issues of the permahaze settling. I should caveat they are 5 gallon batches and I bottle condition vs. keg.
     
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  4. TooHopTooHandle

    TooHopTooHandle Initiate (0) Dec 20, 2016 New York

    Also have no problems at home with the permahaze, just at work
     
  5. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,375) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
    Society Pooh-Bah

    Yeah, I gathered that. Needless to say there is something(s) different going on and hopefully someone will come up with the answer(s).

    Your idea of brewing with distilled water (and salt additions) is a worthy experiment to see whether the cause is the commercial brewery's water source. If that batch also has issues with the permahaze settling too quickly then it is onto step B (whatever that is).

    Needless to say but the best solution is to sell all of your beer in less than a week! :wink:

    Cheers!
     
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  6. TooHopTooHandle

    TooHopTooHandle Initiate (0) Dec 20, 2016 New York

    Next step after water will be switching grain supplier for a batch. Most of the time we do sell it in about a week, but we distro stuff and sometimes the distro stuff sits at places and I'm not happy with how the product is after a couple weeks. Want to give people the best I can do and I wont settle until I fix this lol
     
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  7. hoptualBrew

    hoptualBrew Initiate (0) May 29, 2011 Florida

    No, not directly.

    Working from general concepts and anecdotal observations with my own brewing.

    “The calcium cation is the principal ion that determines hardness. It promotes clarity, flavor, and stability in the finished beer. The magnesium cation also contributes to hardness and affects the mash pH, but to a lesser extent than the calcium. The sodium cation doesn’t contribute to water hardness. In small amounts (<100 ppm) it is benign, but at larger concentrations, it can cause the beer to taste minerally or metallic”.

    I’d like to find something material but have not been able to find anything technical.

    What we do know is Calcium aids in hot break, precipitating carbonates and oxalates. Hard water is also associated with dryness as opposed to roundness in mouthfeel.

    So when it comes to brewing NEIPA, I would think, and have had good success lately, with using filtered water with low hardness and using NaCl and MgSO4 for salt additions.

    Just my .02
     
  8. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,375) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
    Society Pooh-Bah

    If you ever locate a technical article that specifically addresses hard water and brewing Juicy/Hazy IPAs I would be interested in reading it.

    I have homebrewed Juicy/Hazy IPAs using my filtered tap water which is not soft and I have not had issues with the permahaze dropping out.

    Cheers!
     
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  9. NeroFiddled

    NeroFiddled Grand High Pooh-Bah (7,276) Jul 8, 2002 Pennsylvania
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    That's what she said.
     
  10. NeroFiddled

    NeroFiddled Grand High Pooh-Bah (7,276) Jul 8, 2002 Pennsylvania
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    It would certainly make sense that more minerals in suspension would lead to more precipitation of proteins.
     
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  11. wasatchback

    wasatchback Pooh-Bah (1,574) Jan 12, 2014 Tajikistan
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Get yourself some Tanal A...
     
  12. thebriansmaude

    thebriansmaude Crusader (472) Dec 16, 2016 Canada (AB)
    Trader

    In the mean time rock them kegs back and forth a bit
     
  13. pweis909

    pweis909 Grand Pooh-Bah (3,250) Aug 13, 2005 Wisconsin
    Pooh-Bah

    This won't directly solve your problem, but if you listen to the latest episode of The Session on the Brewing Network, towards the end of the show a pro brewer relates how he struggled to get haze to persist in his IPAs. The guy's name was Vinnie something or other. It seemed like he was a pretty talented brewer. Perhaps you are in good company. But what do I know? If you had the audacity to serve me a clear beer, I'd probably respect you in the morning.
     
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  14. ECCS

    ECCS Pundit (755) Oct 28, 2015 Illinois

    What if you try taking some source water from your commercial brewery back home to homebrew with? If the haze drops out of that homebrew batch, it would seem the water is the culprit. If the haze stays in that homebrew batch, it would seem the commercial equipment/process is the culprit.
     
  15. TheHumanTorch

    TheHumanTorch Devotee (353) Jul 19, 2013 Connecticut

    I can write a lot on this subject, but it's not conclusive. After writing this whole thing, I want to apologize in advance about the formatting and info dump.

    I brewed on a pilot system for a summer and never had the ipa dropping clear issue.

    On our 10 bbl brewhouse, different story. Ferment beer, dry hop, looks hazy, gradually goes clear. I have 2 dissolved oxygen meters in house. One reads ppm for pitching, one reads ppb for all things post fermentation. We purge all vessels post fermentation down to the lowest reading on the DO meter. Generally seeing ~40 ppb in the can. The issue has persisted with 3 different yeast strains (wyeast 1187, wlp 007 and wyeast 1099), but gets progressively worse as yeast generations go on. All of these were actually sourced from the Brewing Science Institute in liquid form.

    Our dry hops are dosed through a valve on top of our fermenters from a purged vessel. We've tried different methods of recirculation at various temperatures. Let's say there is no doubt we have good contact between the hops and the beer.

    I have 2 theories that I don't have the ability to confirm. I'll just add quickly that we try to take very good care of our yeast. We dose zinc into wort in the fermenter. Our yeast is harvested, fed and cleaned right around final gravity. The yeast is stored at 34F and reused within 2 days.

    1. There is excess oxygen being dosed into the wort prior to pitching, causing oxidation and somehow impacting haze stability. Problem: I've tried lowering our oxygen dosing to no avail. At a certain level (low) the beer will remain hazy, but fermentation does not go to completion.

    2. Something about the health of the yeast (good or bad) is causing strong flocculation, which is pulling the hop oils and polyphenols down to the bottom of the tank.

    Other tidbits (randomly ordered)

    At the Craft Brewers Conference in Denver this year there was a presentation on "the secrets of the NEIPA." The presentation was great in some ways, but lacking in the fact that it was given by a researcher, with no supplemental info from brewers. He found that the majority of haze in 12 different ipa samples could be attributed to proteins typically found in wheat and oats. Majority of haze being ~90% with yeast and polyphenol making up ~5% each, and the exception of one sample that was very yeasty. These samples were shipped directly from breweries all located in New England.

    My talks with other brewers basically conclude, add more wheat, flour, oats. While I agree that will make the beer more hazy, I don't think it makes the ideal ipa (based on my favorite IPA brewers) and I also don't think the people I spoke with are outstanding brewers.

    Our recirculation involves pumping beer, which shreds the hop material. I've looked a lobe style pumps that are more gentle. I'm considering adding hops to a separate vessel and moving the beer on top of the hops. This is more similar to the method I used on the pilot system. I preferred the hop character I was achieving using the transfer on top method. On a pro scale we are talking a lot more work and more oxygen, so I prefer if I don't have to go that route, but I'll be trying it soon.

    Last bit, which originally made me think about O2 levels pre pitch is that I don't have this problem at all when using dry yeast with no O2. Right now, for hoppy beer, I use dry and only reuse once. Our haze is as permanent as any brewery I've seen this way.

    Hope this shines some light on the issue. I don't think the answer is simple and I know from CBC that a couple of the big breweries (Bells and Brooklyn) don't have all the info on the subject. If I were you, I'd look at pitching fresh dry yeast.
     
  16. ECCS

    ECCS Pundit (755) Oct 28, 2015 Illinois

    Great post, great insights.

    The quoted part above was interesting and contradictory to my experience. I’ve eliminated all oats/wheat from my homebrew recipes and I’ve seen an improvement in the color, haze retention, and hop flavor.
     
  17. TooHopTooHandle

    TooHopTooHandle Initiate (0) Dec 20, 2016 New York

    Excellent info and I really do appreciate the time you took to write all of that! Cheers!!! I also get my yeast from BSI, but also used white labs (london fog and 007) and wyeast (1318). I also am harvesting and resuing yeast around 5 to 6 gens before starting again with a fresh pitch. You are definitely right about the farther along the generation the faster it drops clear and the clearer it gets. I did suspect oxygen as an issue, but I honestly dont think the beer is oxidized one bit. In the beginning stages of homebrewing neipas I was having oxygen issues until I started doing close pressure transfers. None of my commercial neipas have any flavor/aroma/appearance issue related to oxidation (got pretty familiar with that problem at home on my first couple batches) I aslo eliminated o2 during knock out just to see if that was an issue and it didnt change anything except adding time it took for fermentation to get ripping. I also get a pretty strong whirlpool going to ensure good contract with wort, but have also tried multiple different flow rates and temperatures to see if that changed it and it didn't. I am really intrigued on trying the dry yeast that you are talking about. What dry yeast are you using? Do you mind sharing a grain bill to see how much different it is from mine? At this point I am willing to give anything a shot. I am glad to hear that I'm not crazy and not the only person having this issue. It's just driving me crazy because I've brewed them at home with no issues and they are fantastic and would stand up to most commercial neipas on the market. Once again thank you for your generous reply.
     
  18. TooHopTooHandle

    TooHopTooHandle Initiate (0) Dec 20, 2016 New York

    Have you used it before? If so could you provide some feed back? I read about it a while ago before brewing commercially, but I wasn't having haze issues at home so I dismissed it.
     
  19. wasatchback

    wasatchback Pooh-Bah (1,574) Jan 12, 2014 Tajikistan
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Same. It’s totally unnecessary. American 2row, touch of Carafoam, and a small amount of something for color is all you need. There’s plenty of protein in your typical American 2row. Have you looked at the COA from your maltster? I know many of the craft maltsters in the US shoot for lower protein content than the stuff coming from Rahr/Briess.

    Dry hopping after fermentation is complete and soft crashing to pull as much yeast before adding hops also for me creates better haze stability. The more yeast you can remove then more likely the good stuff is to stay in solution. The more flocculent the yeast the better as well.

    How are you dealing with all that bicarbonate? Got to take a decent amount of acid to get that town to a manageable amount no?
     
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  20. TooHopTooHandle

    TooHopTooHandle Initiate (0) Dec 20, 2016 New York

    Have not looked at the COA yet, but I am going to look into Monday. Wasnt even thinking the grain may have an effect on it till the other day. Also I have not done anything to deal with the bicarbonate. What are my options to deal with the bicarbonate? I usually have to use any where from 80-120ml of lactic on a 3bbl batch to get mash ph into desired range.
     
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