How Do Breweries Get Clear Beer?

For most of its lifecycle, beer was known as the dark and cloudy fermented beverage. The attitude towards the colour of beer brew started to change only after the rapid use of transparent glasses. Once the beer lovers got to see the beauty of their beer, they were not ever ready to get back to the old style. Today, the bar patrons only prefer the bright, sparkling, crystal clear beer against their pennies.

 

Brewing clear beer at home

While commercial beer brewers use fining agents, filtration, and pasteurisation techniques, getting a clear beer at home is not as complex as we think. Homebrewers can get the high prized beer with just a few steps below:

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Select the lower protein grain

High protein helps enhance the body of the beer and head retention, but it hurts the clarity. Thus, it is ideal to avoid the beer grain containing high protein in the process. Choosing the two pale malt and pale malt extract bases will ensure a lighter colour with enough clarity. Beers with wheat and flaked barley will comparatively appear cloudy. However, it is also possible to get clear wheat beer using suitable beer finings (or clarifiers).

Use the best beer fining

Beer finings (or clarifiers) do wonders to make the beer clear, brighter, and lighter. The most common fining agents for homebrewers are:

Irish moss is one of the best fining agents to get the clarity in beer. It is a type of seaweed used in beer at the end of boiling. It accelerates protein and tannins coagulation that helps to prevent the haze chill, making the brew clearer.

Isinglass is another effective beer fining agent to get the clear brew at home. Isinglass is an extract of the swim bladder sturgeon and is rich in collagen. This solution helps to remove the yeast cells.

Gelatin is a positively charged beer fining agent. It is an organic fining that can remove too much colour and flavour from the beer body- leaving it light, fresh, and transparent.

 

Cool-down the wort quickly

The quicker you cool down the wort, the clearer the effect in beer. So, use a counterflow chiller or an immersion to cool the beer as soon as possible. If you take your wort from boiling kettle to fermentation tank quickly, the protein and tannins will reduce, forming a thick layer trub at the bottom of boiling.

 

Filter the brew

Another step in the beer clarifying process is filtration with finings. Used by almost all commercial brewers, the filtration removes the cells of yeast, haze, and even bacteria to give a high level of clarity. The beer filtration package includes a yeast fining agent, polyphenol fining agent, and protein fining agent.

 

Keep it refrigerated

Storing your beer in a refrigerator temperature will help clear the beer quickly, as protein particles, tannins, and yeast cannot remain suspended in cold conditions. Therefore, the drink becomes more transparent than stored at room temperature – some like their beer cold, anyways.

 

 

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