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Yeast / Haze with London ale III

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  • Yeast / Haze with London ale III

    I am having issues when re-using yeast not getting the proper haze for a Hazy/NE style beers. 1st time use/straight from Wyeast the beer remains cloudy almost indefinitely in the serving tanks and/or kegs regardless of grain bill and/or double dry hopped.
    Generation 2+ clears out incredibly fast. Recent example was a double dry hopped session IPA sent to the serving tank after 8 days in the FV on a Thursday, by Monday, it is as clear as a lager.

    Majority of my hazy ipa's/pales are 75% base malt, 20% oats, 5% wheat. Some Double dry hopped, some not. (I don't harvest yeast that has been dry hopped during fermentation).

    I am brewing 10bbl batches SOP are: Pitch yeast. FG is usually reached by day 6-7. Crash to low 50s over the course of 2 days. Drop trub. Harvest into a couple corny kegs the following day. Dump any remaining yeast. Let rise back up to the 60's/dry hop for 4-5 days. Blow c02 into the bottom port to stir up dry hops on day 4-5. Crash back to 30s over the course of 3 days. Dump hops. Send to the serving tank. I dont use any clarifiers, etc. I also cant top crop(wondering if this is the issue, that I am harvesting all the yeast that flocc well?).

  • #2
    I'm sure others will respond on here as well regarding this yeast, as it can be a bit of a harvesting/re-use challenge. Before I offer a possible solution, it should also be said that most, if not all, of the haze associated with modern NEIPAs is protein and polyphenol derived. Putting these beers under the microscope should reveal little to no yeast cells. This form of haze also has the potential to be much more permanent than a yeast haze.

    We struggled with this yeast and its variants for awhile before settling on a harvesting process that worked well to keep everything healthy and consistently performing. For a new pitch, we run in as normal but with an extra 25% oxygen flow during knockout as highly flocculent yeast seem to like this bigger dose of O2. Our typical process is knockout at 66F and set the cellar control for 67F. Starting the next day we ramp it up a degree a day until we arrive at 70F. After 6 days of fermentation, and attenuation reached, we knock the temp down to 64F (vs 55F, our normal harvesting temp for Chico). This "soft crash" drops out enough of this yeast without it compacting hard on the cone. We then harvest at 64F on day 7 and pitch directly into the next fermentation - no cold storage of the brinks. We also conduct a pretty quick harvest, filling a 50L brink in only 8 - 10 minutes. This pulls a thinner slurry that gathers more of the healthier cells above those sedemented hard on the cone. Even with this soft crash and quick harvest we still see great numbers under the scope and very high viability, near 100%.

    The biggest challenge for us with the above method is lining up subsequent brewdays to be only a week apart. If we are rolling out a seasonal IPA with this yeast it becomes a juggling act of keeping the beers fresh throughout its seasonal run by not being able to order a single pitch of yeast and use it over the course of 2 - 3 months, unless we brew every week with it. Your needs and beers may vary to swing this to being in your advantage, though!

    Your method of crashing and harvesting may be selecting the most flocculent cells, even after a single generation, causing the subsequent pitches to drop brite even faster than "normal". I would also expect your attenuation to suffer a bit due to this.

    Regardless, hope this helps!

    Cheers,
    Tom

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    • #3
      I had the same problems for months when I was bottom cropping London 3 and selecting for the bottom settling yeast. As soon as I switched to top cropping our haze has always persisted.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Junkyard View Post
        I had the same problems for months when I was bottom cropping London 3 and selecting for the bottom settling yeast. As soon as I switched to top cropping our haze has always persisted.
        Had a feeling it was that! The tanks only have a small 1.5” port up top for the PRV.
        I wonder If I keep a bunch of 1-2 bbl pitches on hand from wyeast to pitch in conjunction with what I cone harvest, the haze will stay.

        Otherwise I may have to look into a good bottom cropping yeast that work well in a NE IPA
        Last edited by NicaHops; 03-25-2019, 07:41 PM.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by BemidjiBrewing View Post
          I'm sure others will respond on here as well regarding this yeast, as it can be a bit of a harvesting/re-use challenge. Before I offer a possible solution, it should also be said that most, if not all, of the haze associated with modern NEIPAs is protein and polyphenol derived. Putting these beers under the microscope should reveal little to no yeast cells. This form of haze also has the potential to be much more permanent than a yeast haze.

          We struggled with this yeast and its variants for awhile before settling on a harvesting process that worked well to keep everything healthy and consistently performing. For a new pitch, we run in as normal but with an extra 25% oxygen flow during knockout as highly flocculent yeast seem to like this bigger dose of O2. Our typical process is knockout at 66F and set the cellar control for 67F. Starting the next day we ramp it up a degree a day until we arrive at 70F. After 6 days of fermentation, and attenuation reached, we knock the temp down to 64F (vs 55F, our normal harvesting temp for Chico). This "soft crash" drops out enough of this yeast without it compacting hard on the cone. We then harvest at 64F on day 7 and pitch directly into the next fermentation - no cold storage of the brinks. We also conduct a pretty quick harvest, filling a 50L brink in only 8 - 10 minutes. This pulls a thinner slurry that gathers more of the healthier cells above those sedemented hard on the cone. Even with this soft crash and quick harvest we still see great numbers under the scope and very high viability, near 100%.

          The biggest challenge for us with the above method is lining up subsequent brewdays to be only a week apart. If we are rolling out a seasonal IPA with this yeast it becomes a juggling act of keeping the beers fresh throughout its seasonal run by not being able to order a single pitch of yeast and use it over the course of 2 - 3 months, unless we brew every week with it. Your needs and beers may vary to swing this to being in your advantage, though!

          Your method of crashing and harvesting may be selecting the most flocculent cells, even after a single generation, causing the subsequent pitches to drop brite even faster than "normal". I would also expect your attenuation to suffer a bit due to this.

          Regardless, hope this helps!

          Cheers,
          Tom
          Interesting, we are going to start light distro for this style and will brew it 1-2x per week. I also use it as my house yeast for most styles other than Lagers and Belgians.
          With this method are you seeing consistent haze?
          Flavor seems to be consistent with what I am doing but I also need the aesthetics similar since it will be going out the door
          Last edited by NicaHops; 03-26-2019, 09:07 AM.

          Comment


          • #6
            I can credit Dan at Junkyard for his direct guidance with improving our experience with this yeast, and subsequently our beers! As he said, top cropping would be ideal. Similar to you, we are unable to top crop so we are forced to conduct the method I described.

            We use this yeast (Curretly British Ale V, from Omega) in a few of our seasonals, not just hazy hoppy beers. These beers clear great, but that is due to their recipe & processes (the same reason hazy beers stay hazy)rather than the yeast choice. Our London Rye is a clear, deep garnet color that we harvested from to pitch into our Spring IPA, which is VERY hazy, which we accredit to the 4+lb/bbl dry hop as well as a substantial amount of proteinaceous grains in the mash. Despite its solid haze, there are no yeast cells visible under the microscope for this beer. We actually use a standard rate of biofine in the brites for all of our beers, hazy hoppy beers included. I would expect your other beers utilizing this yeast to clear as expected, as long as you can keep it healthy and performing!

            Cheers,
            Tom

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by BemidjiBrewing View Post
              I can credit Dan at Junkyard for his direct guidance with improving our experience with this yeast, and subsequently our beers! As he said, top cropping would be ideal. Similar to you, we are unable to top crop so we are forced to conduct the method I described.

              We use this yeast (Curretly British Ale V, from Omega) in a few of our seasonals, not just hazy hoppy beers. These beers clear great, but that is due to their recipe & processes (the same reason hazy beers stay hazy)rather than the yeast choice. Our London Rye is a clear, deep garnet color that we harvested from to pitch into our Spring IPA, which is VERY hazy, which we accredit to the 4+lb/bbl dry hop as well as a substantial amount of proteinaceous grains in the mash. Despite its solid haze, there are no yeast cells visible under the microscope for this beer. We actually use a standard rate of biofine in the brites for all of our beers, hazy hoppy beers included. I would expect your other beers utilizing this yeast to clear as expected, as long as you can keep it healthy and performing!

              Cheers,
              Tom
              I spoke to Wyeast today. They suggested I crash colder than what I was doing and try to do it in the low 40's. Make sure im dropping the trub twice.
              I don't have any lab equipment here. So she gave me some good guidelines to harvest by visually inspecting the yeast....I should let the slurry settle in a test tub and see 40-60% of solids to liquid in the slurry and my cell count should be good. Then for my pitch I should pitch about 10L or 25lbs for my 10bbl brews. Use nutrient (which I wasn't) and if I decide to go the route of pitching a liter of fresh yeast directly from them I could drop it to about 8L of 20 lbs.
              Thanks for the advice along with Junkyard. Time to start trying a few things out...

              Comment


              • #8
                I can understand the logic of a colder crash before harvest- then you'd in theory be selecting for a more even sample of the yeast you got originally from wyeast.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Junkyard View Post
                  I had the same problems for months when I was bottom cropping London 3 and selecting for the bottom settling yeast. As soon as I switched to top cropping our haze has always persisted.
                  What size port are you top cropping from? Our FV's have 4 inch Dry Hop Ports, and 2 inch PRV's.

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