Beer Forum

So I tried Bio Fine Clear and was not terribly impressed with it's ability to drop the proteins out of sucpension.
It was better than nothing I guess.

I picked up some LQ Chitosan, LQ Kieselsol, and some Polyclar

I think I'll try them and see what they do.

Are you chilling quickly after boil and getting decent cold break? Also, if you are using fining, cooling it down to the point that it forms before using your finings will help make sure that they are able to pull it out.... I believe someone (Doc or Tasty ?) talked about this on one of the shows, they chill it down below where they would serve it, fine it, then keg.

+1 - try to fine it when the beer is down in the low 30'sF.

As far as I am concerned, the only finings agent that does anything like a decent job of chill haze removal, is proper isinglass. The other stuff is what you use because for some reason you don't want to or are unable to use isinglass.

Process aids like polyclar, silica gel, enzymes etc - do all work rather well if you use them properly. But they don't "drop" the hze out of suspension, they stop it happening at all.

I personally use polyclar VT most of the time, and when I do.. Chill haze just doesn't happen.

spiderwrangler wants to know If I'm chilling quickly:
Yipper Skipper I have a 50 foot immersion chiller that runs on 50 degree water. My ground water is beastly cold.
I use WhirFloc in the last few minutes of the boil.

Spider & BDawg talk about cold crashing:
I don't keg. I bottle condition. I don't have a fridge to do cold crashing in anyway. So that's out.

ThirstyBoy likes Isinglass:
I understand that it's the gold standard for pulling tough yeasts out of suspension.
But I've also read that it's not the Shizz for protein.
Protein causes chill haze by virtue of globulation (my term), by which the proteins attract other proteins and eventually develop sufficient size to cause a visible cloud in the beer.
Have I been misinformed about Isinglass?

If I have read the correct material about PolyClar ( it was on the interWebs so one never knows) It works by being positively charges and causing the negatively charged polyphenols and proteins to become attached to it. Then it's heavier than beer so it then drags the proteins down into the cake (flocculates 'em). Also that PolyClar must be separated from the beer before bottling by racking it off or else it can cause excessive nucleation because the physical structure of the little plastic bits tends to encourage the CO2 to come out of solution.

I put some polyclar in a batch yesterday. I'll see if that attacks the protein and polyphenols that cause chill haze.


Which statement has inspired me to a more basic solution: USE MORE WHIRLFLOC ~!!
Irish moss precipitates polyphenols and polyphenols are a major component of chill haze.

Somewhere I read that the Whirlfloc tabs were engineered for large batches in commercial breweries. The thinking was that it's silly to use a whole tab in a five gallon batch because the tabs are for larger volumes.
I think next brew I'm going to try more Whirlfloc.

More Irish Moss as the only fining agent would get me out of the re-pitching game - if it works.

Here are the technical sheets on Divergen F ( trade named PolyClar) by BASF:

Very detailed instructions and how it works are in this one:
https://www.gusmerenterprises.com/image ... 0Sheet.pdf
I have never seen such detailed information on how to use it.


The MSDS
https://www.gusmerenterprises.com/image ... PPMSDS.pdf

I can get this stuff in bulk.
Purchased per KiloGram ( at $38.00) each Five-Gallon batch will only cost $0.18 to dose compared to the brew shop cost of $2.95 per dose.
The maker says you can store it for 3 years.
It's friggin plastic, I bet it'll keep for ever.

1 whirlfloc tab can handle up to 12 gallons... adding more may result in MORE haze. Listen to the Rogue Shakespeare Stout CYBI. JP makes seaweed flavored gelatin.