… is making me swear. I have been using a full whirfloc tablet for the past 10+ batches and have gotten super clear wort prior to going into the kettle. Today I decided to use one of the 4 or 5 Kick tablets I had left. My wort is uber cloudy today after the chill. >:(
I’m assuming you mean into the fermenter, not the kettle, as you stated. I used the Kick tablets for ~20 batches with the same results as Whirlfloc. They’re pretty much the same, with Carrageenan (Irish Moss) as the active ingredient. Remember, you’re using about half as much. I’ve experienced cloudy wort after chilling with no apparent reason before. It happens. The good news is, it won’t have a negative affect on the finished product. Laying the blame on a product is just an easy out.
I am optimistic that the beer will clear. I’m pointing to Kick because it’s the only variable today. The recipe I made today has been made three times since June 4. All the same ingredients from the same bags, same hops, same blob of yeast, same water. Mash pH looked great. Last 10 batches used WF and those batches had crystal clear wort (on top of trub) in the kettle and then into the fermenter. It might not be the Kick but the evidence seems to point to it.
“Today I decided to use one of the 4 or 5 Kick tablets I had left.”
This leads me to believer that you’ve used it before, and with no mention of a similar problem. IIRC, standard packaging is 10 tablets, so maybe several previous uses.
Either way, “the most likely suspect”, is subjective and not a good substitute for evidence. As I said, Laying the blame on a product is just an easy out.
Just because your wort isn’t perfectly clear, that may not translate to the beer. I have seen a nasty cloudy wort produce brilliantly clear beer. Some things that may cause a cloudy wort is starch. But the most likely culprit is beta glucan. It drops out. You can add beta glucanase to the mash to eliminate it. Here’s a link to MoreBeeer! Glucanase product. I use it with every brew, it makes my RIMS system run perfectly every brew. I highly recommend it.
I have my fingers crossed that it will clear. I have used some of the Cellar Science products with mixed results but I don’t think I have used that one. Thank you for the link.
i don’t know about kick, but i recall using a very old like ~2 years old whirfloc tab once and i perceived that it didn’t work as well as fresh ones. ie. the beer seemed unexpectedly cloudy. but who knows
If there is a shelf life, I don’t know it. I purchased these Kick tablets within the last 6-7 months so if there is a shelf life I feel like these would be in good shape.
I used some of Cellar Science’s Brutzyme in an effort to dry out the beer I have fermenting now. Hope it works. [emoji1696]
Charlie Papazian in the 2nd edition of “The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing” page 103:
“If chill haze really annoys you, I could recommend that you drink out of a stone jar or wooden mug…”
Thought that was worth a chuckle even as my undiagnosed OCD wants to look up prices for used lab equipment to see what’s REALLY in my beer.
Did you use whirfloc or a kick tablet for the previous batches? Fining dose is affected by mash pH, gravity, malt variety/age, etc. so the kick tablet might just be the wrong dose for this recipe. I just tried one on a pale ale, it seemed to clear wort into the fermenter pretty well.
Many of my prior batches from the last couple of months were whirfloc and they were all very clear. I hadn’t used the KC tablet in awhile and IIRC, I had a few other batches where the KC tablet resulted in hazy wort as well. I should say that one whirfloc tablet always clears my wort well but I tried the KC because it was half the size (less schputz in the kettle) and supposedly the correct dosage because one whirfloc tablet is supposed to be for 10 gallons.
Try it or whirlfloc with 5 mins left in the boil, after you add your acid ~10 min to drop the boil ph
That’s what I have been doing for a few batches now. Same this time… I had an acid addition with 10 minutes left and then used the KC with 7 minutes left.
I stopped using WF, IM, carageenan years ago. It made no impact on the final clarity of my beer. Nailing the mash pH is the key to good hot and cold breaks. I will admit that in the past, doing side my side boils, I did try one batch with IM and one batch without, and in the hydrometer flask the one wih was decidedly more clear initially. But no difference in the final beer.
Gotchya…not sure why but reading through I thought I read you added the KC at 10 mins.
Probably my scrambled and unorganized posting style. 
I went back and found a couple of notes from when I used the KC in earlier batches and I noted that the wort was not as clear in the kettle as it went to the fermenter. There were two batches with that note. It appears that I used 5-6 of these tablets so I’m not sure what happened on the other ones. But when I decided to just go back to a full-sized whirfloc tablet, the angels sung and the wort was ultra-clear. I should also mention that I had a few batches in there where I cut a WF tablet in half (and also used some of the powder at the bottom of a container… turns out a WF tablet is about 2.3 to 2.4 grams so about 1.2g of the powder equates to half of a tablet) and those batches came out very clear as well. I know that sounds like I’m dissing the Kick but I mentioned earlier that the evidence points to it.
It might be the lower pH of your wort, if you look at the BSG manual lower pH wort will reduce the strength of whirlfloc faster (25% strength reduction at boiling in 10 minutes @ 4.5 pH vs 30 minutes @ 5 pH). The other thing to keep in mind is that after a certain threshold clarity doesn’t improve, but the volume of sediment increases. Did you happen to note how much sediment was in the bottom between the 1/2 and full tablet batches? Either way, it sounds like whirlfloc is the way to go for you.
The pH of the wort would have been somewhere between 5.2 and 5.4. Definitely not lower than 5.0. I hear you on the volume of sediment. It’s one reason I tried the KC in the first place… less schputz in the kettle. There DOES seem to be less schputz but that makes sense since the KC tablet appears to be half the size of the WF tablet. I just wonder if my water/process/pH, etc. has some chemical makeup that makes it less compatible with whatever is in the KC tablet… making it less effective. I just went down to my supply shelf and noticed that I have another 10-pack of KC tablets. :o
Updating an older thread. I was looking through my stuff on Saturday while brewing and I saw that I had one whirfloc tablet left. As I searched further I found that I had 5 Kick tablets left. As I got close to adding one or the other I decided to use Kick and as insurance I used two of the tablets. The wort cleared nicely and looked beautiful going into the fermenter. What this tells me (and what I have been trying to determine for a long time) is that some other factor is at play in my brewing that might cause the wort not to clear properly. A water issue, a mash pH issue, a boil pH issue, a boil intensity issue, possibly a malt with high protein, etc. In my original post I was wrong to blame the Kick for the wort not clearing. These are areas where it’s tough to troubleshoot things because I might conclude that all my WF batches clear and a Kick batch did not so it must be the Kick but then others might say “Kick works for me!” and then we’re left shrugging and not knowing what it could be. I mentioned a “simplification” that I made with the help of BrewBama and one of those steps is to just get the strike water to a pH of 5.5 prior to the mash and then let everything fall into place. My guess is that these issues I had were due to a mash pH that was not in the preferred range. My last 6-8 months of batches have all had good/better clarity except for one that I remember posting about.