Gelatin fining for pale ale?

My recently kegged pale ale is very hazy. Much more so than my usual beers which will drop clear with some time. Should I use gelatin finings or will that risk subduing the hop character?

Have you cold crashed it yet?  If not, do that first.  Assuming a Cal Ale yeast, it will likely drop if you cold crash.

Is it carbonated?  If so, you need to de-carbonate before fining, or else you’ll add a zillion nucleation points and lose a lot of beer.

You can always hit it with gelatin or other finings, then dry hop again, to regain hop aroma, if you lose too much.

It is carbed, cold, and in the keg. I cold crashed before kegging but my sample was still very cloudy. Didn’t realize I can’t fine it when it is carbed. I used s04 which always floccs well for me. Not sure how I got these results unless it is just fine hop debris

I suppose I will just leave it instead of mess with it. I am used to reasonably bright beers so it bugs me more than it should. Maybe it just needs some time.

FWIW, you sure can add gelatin to carbed beer. ive done it and cant say anything negative happened.

Ok cool. Should I worry about any hop character being stripped out as the beer clears?

Beat me to it, Ken. So have I, many times.  You may notice a slight reduction in hop character since some of the hop oils absorbed in the suspended yeast will drop out with the yeast, but you can still add some dry hops to the keg later on and end up with a clearer beer than you have now. On beers where I’ve decided to use gelatin, I increase my late hops a bit to compensate.

go check out the link i just posted in gen homebrew discussion related to test and gelatin…might help.

i’d try it-keep sample before gelatin and then compare to one after to see if you perceive any differences. you can always add hops to your keg.

Late to the game by a couple posts, but I’ve fined carbed beer several times with no worries.

Sometimes time and cold doesn’t work fast enough.

Thanks guys. I hopped this beer up more than previous attempts and I really like the outcome right now however it is very young still. Maybe I will give it a couple of weeks to make further judgments and to see if it drops clear on it’s own.

Man pushing that sulfate up to 200 ppm really made a difference…

+1 on sulfate. i go 250ppm and it was fantastic for me.

Yep, it brings the hops out front and center.

one other thought. you might want to warm a sample up and identify if its chill haze or permanent haze…just for your own knowledge.

and if you do add gelatin (might be a good test and experiment for you) keep original pre gelatin sample so you can evaluate any loss in hoppiness.

Good ideas. It seems to be permanent haze but I have researched the topic enough. The hydrometer sample out of the fermenter looked similar.

http://www.love2brew.com/Articles.asp?ID=609

Keep in mind that the polyphenols in the hops bind the proteins in the beer, so the more hops you add the more haze you’ll have (up to a point).  Keep it cold and it’ll clear on its own in a couple weeks.

This batch had a dramatic increase in efficiency over what I was normally getting possibly due to milling the grain very fine. Could the haze be related to more carry over of grain? I did up my hop amounts but nothing in comparison to what most here would use for a pale ale.

im guessing its more with the process: mash, boil, and perhaps fermentation vs your amount of hops used.

i mill at .027m FWIW and that doesn’t impact my clarity vs. when i milled at .030+

edit: the other type of haze has to do with fermentation- PH and strong fermentation. http://www.love2brew.com/Articles.asp?ID=615

+1
Same here. Have used it in the keg fully carbonated and only noticed improved clarity–and taste due to less yeast in suspension.

So it seems to be slowly clarifying so I won’t worry about it now. I will use gelatin if I don’t see considerable change in a couple of weeks. I am contemplating throwing another ounce of hops in the keg since it still doesn’t seem to have the aroma that I want. I think I got a little impatient during fermentation and dry hopped a little to soon…