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?
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.
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.
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…
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.
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…