Going into my 3rd brew with some questions...

There's no reason you can't use golden light DME for 100% of your malt. What other DME are you using?

 

A lot of homebrewers prefer DME because it stays fresh longer than LME. Also, when you add it, it tends to float, so it's less likely to scorch. Going with 100% DME, and using the lightest variety you can find, should work well.

The changes you are already contemplating will help a lot. A bottling bucket, in particular, is pretty crucial. I bet the bucket, by itself, will help a lot in terms of beer clarity. Another thing to consider is that moving the fermenter tends to stir things up. If you have to move it before you siphon the wort, then consider moving it a day or two ahead of time, so the sediment will settle back down. You can also be conservative and leave some beer behind over the sediment, to minimize the risk of picking any up.

I'm guessing tapwater is pretty warm in Arkansas in August/September (actually I grew up in Little Rock, and I remember the tap water being pretty warm), so you might want to consider methods that you might use to knock the last 10 or 20 degrees off your wort. (Even if the tapwater is close to pitching temperature, it will take a very long time to lower the temperature at the end.) Probably the cheapest way to do it would be to get a bit of ice, and when the wort is at 80°F or so, remove the chiller and put the kettle on ice for the last few degrees. If you're going to brew a lot, it might be worth investing in a pump so that you can pump icewater through your chiller. (The way this works, by the way, is that you start by circulating tapwater, and then you switch to pumping icewater when you are already down around 80°F. It's a waste of ice to use it in a higher range, where tapwater is highly effective.)

Speaking of which, how are you controlling fermentation temperature?

 

Since I don't siphon or use a spigot, I whirlpool simply to chill my wort faster. Once I'm near pitching temp I leave it alone to let the break material settle. I add a 5gal paint strainer bag into my fermenter and place a large colander on top. Then I slowly pour my chilled wort into the fermenter, leaving as much break material behind as I can. Whatever material actually gets poured is filtered through the colander and then the paint strainer bag. I also use whirlfloc tablets in the boil to assist with clarity.

 

Lots of information there.

I think the crux of the issue is: “It might just be the haze that I need gone to appreciate the color of the beer, but clarity is ultimately what I'm after.”

Well, purchasing the bottling bucket (which you stated you intend to do) will go a looooong way to helping here.

The reason we use bottling buckets is to gently siphon the beer off the trub that is on the bottom of the fermenter. You are experiencing haze issues since you are adding priming sugar directly to the fermenter and doing a bit of stirring as well; this stirring action is raising some of the trub off the bottom.

So, next time use the bottling bucket you intend to purchase and your beers will be less hazy. Make sure that you siphon gently (e.g., no splashing) to mitigate air (oxygen) getting into the beer.

Just to set expectations though, 5 ounces of hops for dry hopping will add a fair bit of hop polyphenols to your beer so don’t expect your beers to be even close to clear; hop polyphenols will add haze to your beer.

Cheers!

 

Questions 1, 2, and 3 are all kind of along the same lines.
What type of hops are you using? Pellets? Cones?
To me whirlpooling is pointless if you are using pellets. If you are using cones you would definitely want to whirlpool.
Dumping shouldn't be combined with whirlpooling because you are negating the point of whirlpooling. So if you whirlpool you would then siphon as well.
Dumping vs Siphon is personal preference, I like dumping which makes it easy to aerate the wort which will help the yeast do their job.
I've helped a friend use a strainer before and its painful to use. You need a tight mesh to filter hop matter out and its just going to clog and will take you forever to get your wort into the fermentor.
To me I'd recommend using Irish Moss and Cold Crashing if you are wanting clear beer.

 

@JackHorzempa is correct, and I'll add something that may seem obvious, but just in case: you should add your priming sugar to your beer in the bottling bucket, not in the fermenter. What I do is boil table sugar in a cup or two of water and then leave it covered to cool. Then I just add it to my beer in the bottling bucket (I use my kettle, but that's irrelevant for the current discussion).

 

I'll tackle the haze issue:
Before you do anything else go buy a bottling bucket (or another fermenter bucket) and an auto-siphon. Your haze is the result of bottling the bottom of your primary fermenter. You are bottling dead yeast, coagulated proteins, heavy fats, hop sediment and probably some more disgusting items (collectively called trub).

You eliminate the majority of this by racking to a separate bucket before you stir in the sugar. The night before you rack move your primary to where you will be bottling, tilt it with a block of wood, then don't touch it again until racking is complete You want any sediment stirred up by moving to settle. Don't be stingy . . . expect to leave some beer behind in the primary because you don't want your auto siphon to even touch the trub. Now you will have relatively clear beer to be mixed with sugar.

To make crystal clear beer you probably will need finings and use a dedicated fridge/freezer . . . it only took me a couple of years to fine tune this technique.

1. For whirlpooling search youtube for ideas . . . it's an excellent technique and can be done with a spoon.
2. By all means siphon from kettle to primary.
3. Strainers will catch some of the big pieces, but plan on leaving some wort behind (on top of the sediment).

For bottling: don't wait 45 minutes. Stir in the sugar and start the bottling with a few random stirs as you go.

Unsolicited but free advice: Your next recipe is a poor choice for a third attempt (and I'm a DIPA lover). Unless you can oxygenate a 1.084 wort expect poor attenuation (which will ultimately fight your hop flavor). Suggest something with a lower OG (consider the award winning BA APA IPA). Maybe sip on a Ruination or Maximus or Hop Stoopid to clear the shakes.

 

Some people use a water bath to which they add a few frozen bottles, rotating them through the freezer. There are more complicated and expensive options. Another cheap one is to put a t-shirt over the carboy, put the bottom of it in water, and aim a fan at it. Unfortunately Arkansas is pretty humid, but in an air-conditioned house this might work decently.

Note that you only really need to control temperature for a few days, while the fermentation is at its most active. Once it dies down, it becomes far less important to control temperature (or to put it another way, after the fermentation is mostly over, 71°F is a good temperature for the beer to rest at - you still want to avoid huge swings and temperature extremes).

Yeah, before is probably better, just so that it naturally mixes in pretty well as you add the beer. But it doesn't matter much. You could easily add the priming sugar to the bucket after the beer. Either way, give it a good stir (but not so vigorous that you're splashing it, which might unnecessarily introduce oxygen). Uneven distribution of priming sugar is a major reason people end up with bottle bombs.

I use a Whirlfloc tablet around 15 minutes. (Half a tablet should actually do the trick for a 5-gallon batch.)

For many styles of beer, it helps to oxygenate the wort before pitching the yeast, and this is especially important for high-gravity beers. You can get a fair amount of oxygen into the wort by shaking it around for a few minutes in the fermenter, but for a high-gravity beer many homebrewers would recommend adding oxygen with a diffusion stone. This helps ensure that the yeast are healthy during the fermentation, so that they finish strong and don't create off-flavors. It is less crucial for a moderate-gravity beer.

 

A while back a new brewer asked for help in brewing a barrel-aged Russian Imperial Stout. He didn't know a racking cane from a rack-an-pinion but wanted his first attempt to be an extremely complex beer. Your recipe isn't that extreme, but here's what you are facing:

High gravity beers need extra oxygen for the yeast to complete their job. I'm guessing your yeast knowledge is limited at this point, but you really want an IPA to finish in the 1.010 - 1.012 range (some will say even lower). To do this you need moderately high attenuation which is achieved by pitching the proper cell-count of yeast at the correct temp into a well oxygenated wort. Your proposed recipe is a strain on all these parameters. If you don't nail the FG expect a higher malt presence which is uncharacteristic of DIPAs.

Additionally; your recipe has a shit-load of hops (that's good!) but you are having trouble with racking and potential oxidation of beer/hops . . . this becomes critical when you boost the hop level. Would be a shame to have these wonderful hops start to spoil before the beer is carbed.

Pretty much all the world-class DIPAs do extensive whirlpooling which is new to you. This can be equipment specific, so until you've done it a few times expect checkered results. I'm personally skittish of buying hops "off the rack" because you never really know if they are fresh. More than one brewer has been disappointed with faded hop aroma/flavor.

Do you know your water profile? The brewers at Burton-on-Trent lucked out by having very desirable local waters for IPAs, most of us have to treat our water to make the hops sparkle. Here's a good discussion.

None of this is a slam, but problems that can keep your beer from being spectacular. I waded through all of this over the years and found it was a fun part of homebrewing, especially when each obstacle was conquered. My suggestion is small steps before giant strides. There's a reason pilots solo in a Cessna/Piper instead of an F-35.

 

Is this applicable also to cooling wort in a simple ice bath? Is it more efficient to start off with the pot sitting in the sink with cold tap water and then once it has cooled to around 80F (after changing the water a few times to fresh cold tap water) to start dumping in the ice, or would the net effect be the same (or worse) without the aid of an immersed wort chiller? I've been thinking about how to make the cooling stage more efficient without investing in a wort chiller for the time being, but I don't know enough about the physics of this to know what to do.

 

Yes, I think this would be the best approach. The rate at which the wort cools is a function of the difference between its temperature and the temperature of the surrounding liquid (the water bath). It's a waste of ice to use it when the wort is over 100°F, because your tap water should be considerably colder and should be doing a fine job extracting heat. As the wort gets down toward 80°F, depending on location/season, the tapwater might not be much cooler than the wort, and so it needs some help.

My one word of caution is that if you are filling and draining the sink, definitely have a lid on the kettle while the faucet is running (but otherwise you should probably leave the lid off), or remove the kettle from the sink entirely. And be careful not to splash water into the wort. Now that it's cooling down, it's no longer protected from bacterial growth, and tap water isn't necessarily sterile. (Your sink is definitely not sterile.)

 

Very cool to hear, I will definitely try this for my next batch. Thanks alot for the tip and advice.

 

I agree with @PortLargo's advice above, but I want to say: relax, don't worry, have a homebrew. This is an extract brew, so don't worry about water chemistry. Don't worry about whether your whirlpool is good enough - just doing a whirlpool is a big enough improvement for now.

I do agree that it's best to avoid really high-gravity beers for now. But I wouldn't stress out about all the things you could theoretically be doing to make your beer better (water chemistry, oxygen, etc.). If you enjoy brewing it, and you enjoy drinking it, then you're doing it right. You can improve a little at a time, and in the meantime you can brew great beer.

And by the way, @IPAustin7, probably the first thing to think about in terms of improvements is fermentation temperature control. A lot of homebrewers would list that as the factor that had the biggest effect on their beer quality. Again, don't let it slow you down for now, but as you're thinking about the improvements you want to make, that one should be at the front of your mind.

 

The "auto" part of it is that you don't need to use CO2 or your mouth to start the siphon. The built in pump gets things going.