So I've got an interesting floccing issue. We have taller 7 bbl fermenters with a 45 degree cone. Beers tend to be cloudy after crashing to 32 degrees even with high floccing yeast. We have 30 bbl fermenters that are wider and have 60 degree cones that will clear out completely when crashing to just 55 degrees, so after a lot of research I attribute this cloudiness in the 7 bbl fermenters to tank geometry. We use biofine clear, about 200 mL for the 7 bbls, and sometimes the beer will clear up, sometimes it won't. But without fail, if we keg the beer and put it in our cooler which has an ambient temp of 40 degrees, it will clear up in about a week.
We have a good vigorous boil and tend to knockout into the fermenter clear. We are at about 150 ppm for calcium. Per suggestion from a few yeast suppliers, I've bubbled CO2 into the fermenter post fermentation/pre-crashing to knock yeast back into suspension to try and grab more cells, but haven't had any luck changing the situation. So I'm at a bit of a loss. Are we damned by tank geometry, or is there another option? I know CO2 can aid in cell binding, should I try to bubble CO2 through the fermenter near the end of fermentation to encourage more binding? Obviously I won't be able to harvest yeast from that tank after that point, and I don't really want to lose any aromatics. I'd rather not increase biofine additions, because we are able to keep a nice head on the beer currently, and higher levels tend to screw that up. Higher calcium rates tend to give us a minerally flavor.
Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this or has some other ideas I haven't considered yet. Thanks all.
We have a good vigorous boil and tend to knockout into the fermenter clear. We are at about 150 ppm for calcium. Per suggestion from a few yeast suppliers, I've bubbled CO2 into the fermenter post fermentation/pre-crashing to knock yeast back into suspension to try and grab more cells, but haven't had any luck changing the situation. So I'm at a bit of a loss. Are we damned by tank geometry, or is there another option? I know CO2 can aid in cell binding, should I try to bubble CO2 through the fermenter near the end of fermentation to encourage more binding? Obviously I won't be able to harvest yeast from that tank after that point, and I don't really want to lose any aromatics. I'd rather not increase biofine additions, because we are able to keep a nice head on the beer currently, and higher levels tend to screw that up. Higher calcium rates tend to give us a minerally flavor.
Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this or has some other ideas I haven't considered yet. Thanks all.
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