So i brewed 2 gallons of a 1.102 barley wine that I will be turning into "ice" beer. I used irish moss for the first time. I used almost 2 teaspoons of it at 15 minutes left in the boil along with some yeast nutrient. After cooling the wort, the irish moss did work but it was a mess. It was dispersed throughout the entire kettle. It looked like a big smoke bomb in there. Parts were very clear and some were still very hazy. I did my best to siphon the wort but it was annoying and a pain in the ass. Did i do something wrong? I was under the impression that it was supposed to drop the proteins from suspension. Needless to say, i said, "the hell with it" and pitched the wort into my vessel.
I helps to coagulate them, but I've never seen it drop them to the bottom of the kettle without a prolonged rest. Its ok if some of it ends up in the fermentor. You'll see it all drop out later when fermentation is done. Plan to imply rack carefully then and you'll leave much of it behind.
A two teaspoon Irish moss addition to 2G batch was not only 4x more than necessary but was totally unnecessary given it's a barley wine.
Get me some pics. Stat! That would be a bitchin` picture. I don't think that Irish moss will throw the flavor off, and I think that if you need to cold-crash this beer you could do so in any fridge that you own. I'm assuming you aren't using a 6.5 gal bucket for this. Time and gravity will do everything you need on a BW, as said above. RDWHAHB.
I transferred it to a 5 gallon bucket since after i aerated the wort, it was nothing but foam and it was a pain in the ass trying to pour that foam into 2 one gallon jugs. So i just left it in the bucket for the primary. I do have the ability to cold crash it so i will just end up doing that. and what the hell is RDWHAHB mean?!?!
