Hey guys/gals I have been brewing AG for about a year now and encountered something new this weekend. When I was vorlaufing my mash I was able to get it nice and clear. I then batch sparged for ~20 minutes and when I was vorlaufing, my wort was light cloudy/milky. After a few liters of runoff with no change , I thought I might have had a doughball or something in the tun which left some unconverted starch behind. I decided to close it all up and sit for another 20 minutes (it was still at mash temps) to see if I could convert/clarify the wort. I was still having the same cloudiness after a total of 40 minutes. I am wondering why this would have happened with the sparge and not in the mash and will it impact the final flavor of the beer? Maybe the first runnings were too concentrated to notice the milky appearance but it just seemed odd. Any experience with this? My recipe was basically a loose variant of the AP NEIPA with some flaked wheat as well. I have used these flaked adjuncts before and not had this issue. Thanks!
It's hard to be sure of this since we might all use different words to describe what we see, but what you described is normal to me. I batch sparge. My mash runnings are always clear. My sparge runnings are slightly "cloudy" and always lighter in color when compared to my mash runnings.
This is basically what I experienced, so that makes me feel better. It wasn't an issue of oversparge either. My sparge gravity was around 1.020 it just looked funky. I'm just hoping the final product is still good!
The Brulosphy guys have done at least a couple vorlauf experiments, including one that seems ridiculously extreme. While the brewers seemed to be able to detect differences in the beers, the number of folks who detected differences in blind panels was not significant. Although those experiments may not be the last word on the topic, I am convinced that the impacts of a vorlaufed beer, compared to a reasonably treated non-vorlaufed beer, are pretty subtle. If you are competing for a medal and need to be sure of clear beer, maybe there is something to vorlaufing, but I do not believe a hazy vorlauf will interfere with your drinking enjoyment.
I get this most times I brew (batch sparge every time). When the mash is doing it's original conversion the starch tends to make a compact layer on top of the grain bed and clear out once it is finished converting. Run off is not sufficient to pull this starch down into the grains and into the tubing. Adding sparge water, stirring up the mash, and letting it resettle moves the starch layer back into solution which causes the second (third) runnings to have a starch haze. Proper hot and cold break should take care of it, as well as whirfloc (if using, I don't in a NE IPA). The more flaked product I use in my grist the more I get this occurrence.
