Does anyone here brew commercially?

@TooHopTooHandle, I used the dry yeast of Fermentis S-04 in one of my Juicy/Hazy IPAs and it 'worked' for me.

Cheers!

 

If you want to reduce it by removal (and alas some of calcium), you could pre-boil the water and decant off of the precipitate (CaCO3).

 

The only time I’ve had that happen it was on second generation yeast with that strain. Are you harvesting yeast? If so, you should know that LA3 is actually a highly flocculant strain and that it shouldn’t be harvested from the bottom of a tank. It is a top cropper.

 

That is contrary to research that I have done. A couple years ago when people kept asking what the source of haze in these beers was, I decided to do a bit of comparison between my own beers and other examples from highly regarded hazy IPA’s. It takes a very small amount of yeast to make a beer hazy. The majority of NEIPA’s are unfiltered (obviously) and don’t use finings. That alone lets us know that there will be yeast in the beer. I started adding 1 ml of yeast slurry to 4 ounces of beer filtered at 5 microns. It only took 1 ml of thin slurry to make a beer notably hazy. Then I would put a sample under a microscope with a hemacytometer and would rarely ever get a sample that showed yeast. At most, you’d see one or two cells on the entire field. Couple that with the knowledge that kellerweise can be brewed without filtration and still come out substantially less hazy than most hazy IPA’s and it is clear that yeast is a major source of haze contribution. To further illustrate the point, I put several commercial examples through a filtration flask and found yeast in every example, two of them were from breweries that claim that haze shouldn’t be caused by yeast, and of those two, one of them was from a friend of mine who was giving his beers 2 weeks of conditioning after cold crashing to “make sure” that the haze was only from proteins, polyphenols, and oils. In fact, that same brewer didn’t even cold crash beers until day 17-18 to give the yeast cells time to swell at warm temperatures, so a full month turn around time from grain to glass.

My belief is that when you dry hop during fermentation, some yeast strains lose their ability to flocculate when the hop oils coat the cell membrane. Of course, everything will eventually settle out, but individual cells that haven’t aggregated will take much longer to do so than cells that were able to aggregate.

 

Just for fun, I decided to add 2 ml of actively fermenting beer to 5 oz of filtered beer, so a small amount of yeast...

 

Adding the acid is “dealing” with the bicarbonate. I’ve never started with bicarbonate that high so no idea if that much acid is too much or noticeable. Are you adjusting sparge and kettle pH as well?

 

@honkey

I completely agree with everything you just stated.

Could be a reason why this “new” dry hopping process of biotransformation also helps create a long lasting haze.

All the hop oils introduced on fermentation day 3-4, while plenty of yeast are still in suspension, is likely to reduce yeast cells ability to flocc out. As opposed to traditional dry hopping methods at end of fermentation when most yeast has flocced out.

 

Two things that I will add that have not been mentioned yet is to target 5.6 or 5.7 mash pH and try adding some pectin-heavy fruit to the end of the boil.

 

Why the higher mash pH?

 

Yeah that makes no sense

 

Just my personal experience that when my mash pH is at 5.6 or higher, my beers don't clear on their own. And they usually do so I believe there is some sort of connection between the two

 

I know a few brewers that would agree with my statement. But beyond anecdotal experience, BYO mentions it in an article and Braukeiser does as well.

https://byo.com/article/the-power-of-ph/

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/How_pH_affects_brewing

Do a page search for "haze" or "hazy"

 

I can’t think of one reason why a high mash pH would have any affect on haze. You also run the

Did you read the part about where Kunze is quoted as saying you get better haze stability at a mash pH of 5.2?

I can think of no reason why a high mash pH itself would be a good thing. You run a greater risk of extracting tannins in the sparge and you will end up with a higher kettle pH. Which I guess for protein coagulation might be better if that’s your thing however you also get a much harsher bitterness and a much higher ph of wort going into the FV especially if you’re adding hops during the boil or WP and you’re not adjusting pH in the kettle.

A higher boil pH will reduce protein coagulation but there are so many negative side effects especially if you’re shooting for a soft, round, bright, more stable beer.

If anything for this style IMHO you should always shoot for a pH on the lower end of the spectrum, kettle full 5.2 or lower then adjusted even lower at KO.

 

Not sure how vigorous of a boil you are doing, but I believe a hard rolling boil can break down proteins that are wanted for haze. Your pro system may be “too efficient” in the boiling process, having a much more vigorous rolling boil than you had on your homebrew system. Or that could be at least one factor, could be multiple things already mention by others!