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Clearing up my beer.

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jacob311

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So my DIPA is looking great and smelling amazing but it is still cloudy. I did not use Irish Moss as the local store was out and they weren't getting a shipment for a week. Please help me clear my beer!!


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If you can crash cool for a week or so, that will help. It also depends on the type of haze. If its yeast, it'll settle (what yeast did you use? 1056?) I wouldnt use gelatin; you'll strip out a lot of your hops.
 
Unless you are entering this in a competition clarity is not going to be that important. To answer your question though, I found that beers will clarify quite a bit after 2 weeks in the fridge.
 
Unlike the others, I have found a correlation between the clarity of my beer and whether or not it is good. Sometimes even within the same batch (when the bottom half hasn't finished clearing yet and I put it into kegs, the "clear" keg is noticeably more delicious than the "B" keg).

That's not to say the relationship is necessarily causative. That being said, I would take some steps to clear your beer up:

1) First try Biofine. It's cheap, fast and easy. If your main problem is yeast in suspension then this will clear it right up.
2) If that doesn't work then try gelatin. There is a great article on it at http://www.bertusbrewery.com/2012/06/how-to-clear-your-beer-with-gelatin.html - this should clear both yeast and protein (chill haze) but is a bit more complicated and could have drawbacks if you do it wrong.
3) Stock up on whirlfloc tablets by ordering some online or getting a nice big package of them at your LHBS so this doesn't happen next time.
4) I also like to use Clarity-Ferm for a variety of reasons, but one of the nice ones is that it prevents chill haze from ever forming but otherwise has little impact on your beer. It also helps your beer pass a "gluten free" lab test, although the jury is still out on whether this translates into it being drinkable by people with gluten sensitivity or celiac disease. This won't help you right now (since you have to pitch it along with yeast) but it's something you could keep on hand for the future if clarity is important to you.
 
irish moss did not help with my chill haze problem.. but gelatin + cold crash made my beer crystal clear!
 
I used the White Labs English yeast and rye along with crystal malts. I can cold crash it and will check out my local shop. Thanks! Worried about the gelatin stripping flavor as it is a single hop DIPA.


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Worried about the gelatin stripping flavor as it is a single hop DIPA.

I had the same fear when using gelatin to clear my dry hopped beers, so I now use the following procedure:

  • Ferment 3 weeks in 6 gallon carboy (5 gallon batch)
  • Cold crash 1 day
  • Add gelatin, wait 3-4 more days
  • Rack to 5 gallon carboy, leaving yeast/trub behind
  • Allow 1 day to warm back up to room temperature
  • Add dry hops, wait another 5-7 days
  • Cold crash 1 day
  • Rack to keg/bottles, begin carbonating

This gives me all the clarifying power of cold crashing and gelatin, while protecting my dry hops from being stripped away by said gelatin.
 

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