Northeast Haze through a microscope

You have me looking forward to trying my first clear hefeweisse. Been thinking about it since I read your comment.

 

Let me know what you think.

 

It might be as simple as sticking an unopened can in a centrifuge and spinning it down, assuming he had access to the right kind of centrifuge.

 

I am guessing you mean something like pictured below but with ‘receptacles’ large enough to accommodate cans and/or bottles?

Cheers!

 

@patto1ro do you avoid Hefeweizens on draft?

This is a serious question, I'm not giving you crap for enjoying Hefeweizens without the yeast.

 

I don't even want to think about how long you'd need to wait to open that can.

 

This is totally anecdotal and in no way scientific but I agree with the opinions that the haze is a yeast/hops combo thingy. (Hey, I warned you it wasn't scientific!). When learning to brew dry-hopped ales, I was instructed from more than one source to add the dry hops in secondary fermentation or later, after the beer was racked off the trub. The reasoning was that much of that hops aroma that you are trying to capture would be scrubbed away if added when the beer was in active fermentation, resulting in less hop oil saturation than you could otherwise have had. But ever the iconoclast, I decided to add dry hops at the beginning of fermentation on one batch, just to see what would happen. The wort seemed to be a little slow kicking off and I was worried that I had stunted the yeast with the early hop addition. But when it did start going, I wound up with a very vigorous fermentation (and of course, massive amounts of trub in the fermenter). I usually do secondary fermentation in corny kegs under a slight pressure which normally causes a beer to drop clear very quickly. This time it never did clear properly (I regarded it as a fault and not a virtue) and even after a few weeks under cap it was still turbid. BUT...it was one of the tastiest IPAs I ever made and had that "juicy" quality that so many of us love. That was 1056 yeast, BTW. That's why I think it is suspended yeast reacting with the hop oils that cause this cloudiness. If any brewers out there think I'm way off base, let me know.

 

Yeah, we have one where I work that almost fits beer bottles, but might fit a skinny can. A place I used to work at had an archaic cast iron centrifuge with large bells that would have been perfect for spinning down bottles of homebrew. Cigar City may have a big centrifuge for isolating yeast that the brewer used (just a guess).

 

FWIW I held a similar theory until I saw the microscope slide of Tree House Green beer (re-posted below). As the OP stated: “However in the Green there was very little yeast.”

Cheers!

 

I haven't seen anything, I'm not sure if it was recorded or not. The session was called Behind the Beer: Crafting the Future, if you want to keep an eye out incase it does get posted somewhere.

 

I will, thanks.

 

I first heard about adding dry hops to active fermentation in a presentation by Stan Hieronymus at the National Homebrewers Conference in Philadelphia in 2013. Stan was talking about new research that shows the there are biotransformations to the hops that lead to new aroma compounds. See an article he wrote about Heady Topper that explains more:

https://beerandbrewing.com/VL2BdCYA...r-no-moss--inside-the-alchemists-heady-topper

"Kimmich acquired the Alchemist house yeast strain, known as “Conan” as well as VPB1188, when he worked at Vermont Pub and Brewery. Over time it evolved into his own, just as Vermont Pub and Brewery founder Greg Noonan made it his own after acquiring it from English sources. Kimmich particularly likes the apricot and tropical fruit aromas that this strain produces, a combination of the esters that result after yeast creates alcohol and the hops-derived aroma compounds that evolve during the fermentation process (called biotransformations by brewing scientists)."

JC Tetreault at Trillium also advocates this method, "in order to assure good aromatic pre-cursor bioconversion."

Makes me also wonder if these biotransformations from dry hopping during active fermentation do something to make it cloudy. This would NOT require (as @JackHorzempa suggests) that there would be yeast present at the end. Only that the yeast does something to the beer to make it cloudy.

I just brewed a clone of Trillium Fort Point Pale Ale (that quote is from the recipe in a recent Brew Your Own issue) a week ago and added the Citra dry hops to the end of active fermentation on Saturday. Yeast was WLP007. I'll be bottling this Saturday. I'll let you know how cloudy it is. That yeast is a pretty strong flocculator.

 

I bottled my version of Trillium Galaxy Fort Point Pale Ale yesterday.

I used the dry version of WY1098/WLP007: Fermentis S-04.

I dry hopped with a total of 5 ounces of hops: 4 ounces of Galaxy and 1 ounce of Columbus.

Below is a photograph of the hydrometer sample; this beer is quite cloudy at the point in time. It will be interesting to see if the appearance is the same after a few weeks of bottle conditioning.

Cheers!

 

Looks spot-on, maybe a bit lighter than I recall Trillium beers, but quite turbid.

How'd it taste?

I also wonder at what point Trillium decides their beer is "done" and ready to serve?

 

It is not carbonated yet so I can't really provide good input here. I can say that it didn't taste awful. I will know better in a few weeks.

I can report that my cellar smelled glorious yesterday as I packaged this beer.

Cheers!

 

Hefeweizen is a bottled beer.

 

I wanted to chime in on the hefeweizen discussion started by @patto1ro

I'm not hating on hefes with some yeast presence, but I don't like a lot.

For commercial examples, I normally slow pour the bottle just like I would any other bottle conditioned beer. I never swirl the yeast in the bottle. Some beers, like SN Kellerweis, would just have too much yeast in the glass if I did that, imo.

My homebrewed hefes are almost always kegged. The first few pints are undrinkable. The first half of the keg is pretty "normal" in yeast presence and acceptable to me. The second half of the keg is usually crystal clear, and is my favorite part of the keg.

 

There is a tavern not 3 miles from where I'm sitting that has Hacker Pschorr Hefeweizen vom Faß. I've also had Hefeweizen vom Faß in Bavaria. And yes, there was suspended yeast in their pours.

 

Me serenading a beer (hazy or clear) it doesn't matter:

"Haters gonna hate, lovers gonna love. I don't even want none of the above I want to sip on youuuu"

Seriously though, no one can definitively say hazy is better/worse than clear. It is all personal taste and arguing over it wont lead to anything. As long as the beer is good, what is stopping you from drinking it?