What may be the reasons why my clear homebrew goes into keg clear (cold crashed at 39F) and turns cloudy after forced carbonation.
I don’t pressure transfer or purge my korny keg with co2, or using any cold side finning. Homebrew is dry-hopped in the keg.
Did you move the keg & stir up the sediment? Are you seeing this after dispensing a glass of the beer from the dip tube? You might be getting cloudy beer off the bottom and need more time to let it settle…
Just enough moving to get the keg to the kegerator. Yes, it’s cloudy pouring into glass from keg tap. What I have noticed that two weeks after carbonation it does clear.
P.S. Forgot to mention that its homebrew is dry-hopped in the keg.
-----> [quote]Homebrew is dry-hopped in the keg.
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Are you dry hopping in the keg with loose hop or are you putting the hops into something like a SS spider or mesh bag? If loose then yeah, your beer is going to be cloudy for a few pulls.
The carbonation has nothing to do with it. It’s from dry hopping in the keg. You’re adding gobs of polyphenols with the hops, which bind with proteins in the beer to form the haze. Doesn’t matter if the hops are loose or in a bag. Over time, the largest of those polyphenol/protein aggregates will settle and the beer will slowly clear.
Did you cold crash before you put it in the keg or after? Chill haze only sets after being chilled.
I cold crash before transferring to the keg. I do use hop sacks, sanitized, of course, to dry hop homebrew in the keg. I thought it may be the dry hopping. Is it best to let naturally clear or can I use a fining that will not strip the flavor from the beer?
If it was clear before the dry hopping it could simply be the hop polyphenols creating a haze. Hard to say exactly. If it bothers you you could fine it and yep - you my lose some aroma. Personally, for hoppy beers I expect a little haze.
Which way is best is really personal preference. Clear beer is not a priority for me, so I usually prefer not dealing with adding a fining.
I suspect that any flavor-stripping that supposedly results from fining is from opening the keg to add the fining, which allows oxygen ingress, rather than from the fining itself. If you’re going to add a fining, try to do so via the gas-in fitting rather than opening the keg lid. When I do add a fining, I use a 20mL syringe connected to a short piece of tubing, which in turn is connected to a gas-in ball-lock connector. I suck up the fining, push out the air and then inject the fining rather than opening the lid and dumping it in. Works well.
Thanks for all the feedback. I now have new techniques to use on my homebrew!