I really like the convenience of US-05 dry yeast, but I don’t like the thick sludge it leaves in my bottles. What do people do to increase the flocculation of US-05 in fermenters?
Wait or cold crash.
Gelatin
How would I use gelatin? Can I use Knox? What are the downsides to gelatin? Specifically, would it interfere with dry hopping? Thanks.
If yo uare bottle conditioning I am not sure there is any way to avoid the sludge. even if you drop most of the yeast out in the fermenter more will be produced during conditioning. I find (although I have not used US-05) that if I let the bottles condition properly and then chill them and pour carefully I don’t get any crap in the glass and the bottles rinse out just fine.
Just kegged an IPA made with US-05 which was quite cloudy. Found a thread in the archives describing the process, so I added a little over a tsp of unflavored gelatin bloomed in 8 oz ~170F water and gently stirred it into the keg with a sanitized racking cane. In just 24 hrs it was noticeably clearer and now sparkles like it was filtered (one week later).
If you’re bottling, you’ll need to fine in primary before transferring to the bottling bucket, but from my experience it’s very worth it. Much quicker than just cold-crashing, and leaves nothing behind in the beer.
Don’t think it will affect aroma, but not really sure - my dry hopped IPA has a full, pungent, aroma as expected.
I find that US-05 does not flocculate much, so when I bottle condition and put the bottled beer in the fridge I get ten times more sediment than normal. It makes cleaning the bottles much more difficult especially when people return dry bottles to me.
Thanks, fining dryhopped IPAs was what I was most concerned with b/c they are cloudy from the dry hopping.
What I have found is by adding a bit of a highly flocculative yeast will help greatly. For example WLP570 is very powdery (super kleer didn’t even help). But when I bottle with a bit of S-04, which forms a good firm lees, even the powder WLP570 clears up bright in the bottle in just a couple weeks. In fact S-04 has become my bottling yeat of choice for high gravity ales or anything that is very powdery.
interesting, I didn’t realize a high-floccing yeast would also pull a low-floccing one out of suspension. Good to know!