Beer Forum

What are Clarity-Ferm, Ultra-Ferm and Amino-Quik?

I saw White Lab's ad in the current BYO (p.17) and have never heard of "fermentation enzymes" before.

From the ad it seems like Clarity-Ferm might be a proteinase, to break down chill haze.

There are lots of enzymes involved in fermentation too. Cleaving polysaccharides, glycolysis, pyruvate decarboxylation, and reduction of acetaldehyde to ethanol are the main steps, and each requires an enzyme. So Ultra-Ferm could be intended to speed up fermentation by saturating the wort with some or all of them.

Amino-Quik is probably an amino acid supplement, to provide FAN that's needed for reproduction. That wouldn't be an enzyme though...

I was wondering if anyone ever used Ultra-Ferm. I remembered a Sunday Session where Shea Comfort talked about using enzymes to dry out a beer. He said "amylase" and I could never find anywhere. Then I read about Ultra-Ferm on the Whitelabs page and I realized that was it! Dosage would be around 1.5 - 2.5 mL to hectoliter.

That makes me wonder about all of my beers which failed to atenuate properly. I mean, why people don´t use this often in barley wines? If I brew a 1.100 beer and it fails to get below 1.038 for example, wouldn´t it be easy to add that to it?

Has anyone used this product before? What´s the consensus?

White Labs was handing out samples of Clarity-Ferm at NHC. I tossed a vial into a batch of mild that I"ll be kegging in a couple of days. I'll post my observations.

just a little googling

Clarity Ferm is a protein degrading enzyme that F's up the proline fraction of polypeptides, and thats the one that does most of the bad work for your chill haze formation. So its about chill haze

Sounds similar to Brewers Clarex - which you can see an explanation of here

Ultra Ferm is an amyloglucosidase and so its basically going to chew all the starches etc up into glucose and dry the hell out of your beer. Use it in the mash or fermenter... I'd do it in the mash.

Amino Quick - is a variety of Papain, a protease. Once again about chill haze prevention. Unless the whitelabs product is different to normal papains, I'd say its not much use to a homebrewer, as papains do most of their work at 60 or so degrees C and in a big brewery this happens in the pasteuriser... which then conveniently denatures the stuff to stop it continuing to work over time and screwing up your head retention. Papain is a tricky one to get right and its a fine balance between clear beer and stuffing up your head. As noted however - the whitelabs stuff might be tailored to work differently, I don't know.

Clarity Ferm sounds interesting, I'd rather use this sort of solution than PVPP or Silica Gel... I only hope that one of these days someone releases Maturex in homebrewer sized packages... no more diacetyl problems for anyone.

TB

From my understanding, any enzyme that's added to the tank during primary fermentation is considered a "fermentation enzyme." One of the more common ones that's used commercially is generically called glucoamylase. Kerry's Convertase AG300. is a branded version. Some breweries use this to dry out they ultra-high gravity beers (1.150+). The enzyme is simply able to cleave many of the long-chain (di & trisaccharides) that beer yeast are unable to metabolize into a form that's readily fermentable. Beano (galactosidase) is commonly used by homebrewers as a fermentation enzyme.

I don't know what they are but I have two viles of them sitting in the fridge, Thank you Anniversary party ...I keep forgetting to use them...lol

Stinkfist wrote:I have two [b]viles[/u]

Are you saying it's a bad enzyme? Villainous perhaps? The enzyme lacks moral fiber? Or maybe it tastes disgusting. I'm not sure how an enzyme could be vile...