All-grain Rye beer clarifying suggestions needed

I've moved into all-grain brewing to make a mash. I've adapted a rye beer recipe, leaving out the malt extract and just using malted and rolled (flaked) rye, rice hulls. Did all the rests and used my priming bucket with a grease strainer as the false bottom for a tun. Sparged by putting the grains in a brew bag and pouring 1870F water over the grains and collected wort into carboy. The collected mash has no grains but is very cloudy, even though I followed procedures to get the high temp and cold trub separated (skimmed the high and transferred down to the cold when racking). Tried the egg white method to clarify, not much happening. Since it is too late to use irish moss, any suggestions for post-fermentation clarification?

Topic clarification clarity rye all-grain homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

I imagine most of the cloudiness is possibly from flour or tannins. The flour usually falls out during the boil, but will fall out in the fermentor also. Tannins form tannin-protein complexes which cause a permanent haze.

If the haze is caused by flour particles, then you can just leave the beer - flour particles are large and they will fall out in a few days. If the beer doesn't clear naturally after a week, then it's probably a permanent haze from the tannins.

To fix this, you can use either gelatin or isinglass. Both contain collagen, which is positively charged. Tannins are also positively charged, but attract proteins, which are negatively charged. The collagen binds to the negative protein, and drags the tannin-protein haze out of the beer. It works well.

If you're not already doing it, when mashing, you can clear the wort of flour by vorlaufing the runoff - draining the wort and quietly adding it back to the mash and repeating until the mash runs fairly clear. The grain bed acts as a filter and filters out most of the flour. If you didn't do this, then the mash can be cloudy, and this can make it's way into the fermenter. At the end of boiling, if you leave the kettle for 20 mins, most of the flour (usually covered in lots of protein break) will also fall out and not make it into the fermentor.

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