I am a fan of the Hill Farmstead/Tired Hands rustic beers and when I brew, my beers tend to just clear naturally overtime. Most people would like their beers to be clear, but I want to end up with a cloudy beer. I do all grain brewing and I don't use clearing agents but I do rack my beer off my yeast at least once. I am going for cloudy, not chunks of yeast that I see in some homebrew. Is there any ingredients you would guess they use to give the cloudy appearance? Any suggestions would be helpful.
Less flocculant yeast strains or grains higher in proteins would be a good start. I also find that sizeable dry hop additions will make an otherwise clear beer appear cloudy.
An example of a cloudy beer is a Wit. A Wit is cloudy due to the proteins from the raw (unmalted) wheat used to brew a Wit. I have read where some folks even through in a small amount of flour when they brew their Wit beers to produce some ‘extra’ cloudiness; the idea of adding the starches of flour is not personally appealing to me. Cheers!
How about turning the bottle up side down and giving a gentle shake before opening and pouring? Other than that I'd say try some unmalted grain to increase the protein content of your wort.
I have had good results with adding a few Tbsp. of flour post boil pre chill to my hefs and wits to increase cloudiness. Both of those styles should be drank fresh and quickly so I don't really worry about the risk of infection that comes from unmodified starch in the wort.
A friend of mine routinely throws a handful of white flour into his wits. I don't know if there's a downside.
Throw a couple of tablespoons of whole wheat flour into the boil a few minutes before flameout-it will create the haze you want and the flour will be sterilized.
Maybe add some fruit in the boil? I'm not sure if there's a downside to leaving pectin in the beer, but you'd certainly get some haze.
Try to brew a "KrystalBier" without filtering or fining...it will turn out murky due to Murphy's Law.
The downside is that you are adding starch to the beer which will be 'food' for any microorganisms that are present in the beer (every homebrewed beers have unwanted microorganisms since we sanitize vs. sterilize). If you drink the beer quickly it shouldn't be too big of a deal. Cheers!
Don't rack to secondary. If you are careful during transferring you won't get layers of yeast if you go directly to bottling after primary. That or you could chill your beer more slowly.
What does this mean? Whatever yeast are in suspension at bottling will settle out after eating the priming sugar. Skipping secondary doesn't change that.
Maybe i wasn't clear enough, i was very tired last night before i posted. The primary purpose of secondary is to clear your beer or to dry hop. Any aging you expect to do in secondary can also be achieved by bottle conditioning. If you choose not to do secondary, your beer will be cloudier. Obviously you will never get all of the yeast out of your beer, but if you choose a highly floctuate strain, or you have decent transferring procedures. You will not disturb the trub, and less will be present in the bottle. I realize that that my two sentences above next to each other seem connected, but i meant them as independent thoughts. Sorry for any confusion.
