QC of beer clarity

[Catalano]

I currently don't filter my beer, and use Biofine to clear my beer. My question is without a turbidity meter is there a good way to quantify the clarity of my beer so I know i'm always releasing consistent product.

Any and all recommendations would be helpful.

[TL Services]

Other than a meter, I'd suggest a good lightbox which will allow you to visually assess your beers. Instead of using a fluorescent strip light, we built some with a standard domestic lamp, behind a 1" wide vertical slit.

This allows the samples to be viewed directly, to assess forward scatter, and also at an angle to the light, for 90 degree scatter.

Hope that helps!

[beer_gorilla]

+1 to the light box suggestion.

at my previous brewery, we had a black box w/ a light tube in the front of it that shown back on the samples. on the back wall of the box were a series of horizontal black and white lines. using a commercial grade turbidity std and some beer coloring, I designed a set of standards at various NTUs that encompassed our acceptable ranges for our beer. (the beer coloring was used to approximate our flagships color).

beer samples could be pulled and compared against the stds by viewing the lines through the bottles.

FRONT {light} --> bottles --> lines BACK

[Catalano]

Thanks for feedback

Thanks for the feedback guys. Who do you source the standards from, and what standards would your recommend to start with?

[TL Services]

Most commercial turbidity standards are designed for use with instruments, so are almost all cloudy-white. This makes it difficult to relate these to beer samples because of the obvious colour difference.

Instead I'd advise looking at various beers, including high-volume filtered products, to build up a picture of what is good, acceptable & poor for turbidity.

Don't just look direct through the samples, but also at an angle, which will make it far easier to see 90-deg. haze that doesn't show up well in forward scatter. Typically this will be seen as a 'bloom' within the beer when viewed at an angle, even through the sample may look star-bright when viewed directly through.

[beer_gorilla]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Who do you source the standards from, and what standards would your recommend to start with?

http://www.gfschemicals.com/statics/products/Turbidity_Standards_42_1.html

the AMCO CLear stds come in a range of NTUs. I bought some higher NTU stds for dilution to my range and using their zero NTU solution. things are a little pricey, so figure out exactly what you need if you decide to order

[Catalano]

Photo?

Other than a meter, I'd suggest a good lightbox which will allow you to visually assess your beers. Instead of using a fluorescent strip light, we built some with a standard domestic lamp, behind a 1" wide vertical slit.

This allows the samples to be viewed directly, to assess forward scatter, and also at an angle to the light, for 90 degree scatter.

Hope that helps!

Could you post a photo of your light box for me? I'm starting to make one, but need idea for the background.