For those of us who prefer our beer clear, gelatin is an incredible resource-- simple, cheap, and very effective! Inspired by a conversation with John Palmer, I was curious if the amount of gelatin used to fine would have an impact and so we put it to the test. Results are in!
Nice write up.
Now I am curious about lower amounts of gelatin vs. normal 1/2 tsp. levels.
European Amber Lager, eh? Adding recipe to my database for safe keeping! Congrats!
This is very interesting. I’ve had success using 1T for a 5 gallon batch, it clears SUPER bright. But I’ve also been questioning whether it strips something else from the beer, proteins influencing body and mouth feel. The beers seemed to turn thin. I never seemed to notice this without using gelatin or using smaller amounts. That’s what I was hoping this was going to be testing as well.
I am now playing with a lower amount, 1t for 5 gallons for beers I want to clear faster.
Me too! Perhaps I’ll try 1/4 tsp in my next batch.
I do not like the idea of adding water to my beer at this point. I heat the beer from the hydrometer jar and about a tsp of gelatin to add to 5 gals (not cold crashed) in the keg at kegging. It seems to work very well…
Curious - are you concerned about contamination by adding water or dilution? This got me thinking so I did some quick math.
5 gallons is about 640oz, or 40 pints. The 1/4 cup water recommended is 2oz, which when divided by 40 is 0.05oz or 1.47mL per pint. I’m guessing nobody could pick the 1.5mL diluted pint in a triangle test, but to me it’s helpful to think about that when trying to determine if it bothers me.
They weren’t able to when I first tested it out: exBEERiment | The Gelatin Effect: Impact Fining With Gelatin Has On An American Pale Ale | Brülosophy
Yeah, I’d be curious to see a lower end threshold for clearing, too. Thanks for the write up!
Do you think that the increased density of the large gelatin addition had any bearing on the fact that it all seemed to solidify, and not as much was available to clear the beer? Would it be worth rerunning with the large addition diluted to the same percentage as your small addition?
Thanks again for posting and doing these. Semi OT - seeing alot of you are lager brewers, is it pretty much a “gimme” that you need to fine lagers? My ales end up bright on their own but my recent lager I did is still very hazy about a month on tap (3470). That’s very unusual for me but I am just getting into lagers thanks to the higher temp 3470 xbmt…
German tradition states that no fining agents be used in lager production.
With that being said, I don’t think one needs to use fining agents to produce a clear lager. If you decide to go this route, an extended cold crash period prior to packaging may be in order to accelerate the clearing of the beer during the lagering period.
I brew quite a bit of lagers and I do (for the most part) gel fine them. I feel that it brilliantly clears up the beer very quickly and can even make the beer more drinkable, earlier.
I’ve used gelatin with successful results. It smells a bit like an abattoir, which is a bit alarming, but it’s good to know even huge amounts don’t affect the flavour.
It’s worth bearing in mind that lots of brewers don’t have space for a brew fridge to crash cool, fine or lager beer cold enough to remove chill haze. So any techniques or exbeeriments that reduce haze without the chilling stage would be of great interest to many brewers. The vorlauf experiment, for instance, seemed to show a dramatic improval in clarity after a very large vorlauf relative to a non-vorlaufed beer.
^^^^ THIS
I’m not sure the 10X amount was ever incorporated to do it’s job, especially when there is a blob on the side of the carboy.
Perhaps it doesn’t come through in the pic, but the high amount solution was barely more viscous than the standard and incorporated well into the beer. Not sure if this addresses your concern, and either way, a dilution amount xBmt could be interesting!
Depending on who you ask, the suggestion that fining lager with gelatin might be a “gimme” could yield death threats [emoji12]
I’ve made plenty of lagers without fining, they do eventually drop brite, but nowhere near as quickly as with gelatin.
Thanks, Touche’ on the time aspect. I do believe however Germans get away with Polyclar as it is “removed”.
PVPP can be used as it has been proven that none is in the beer after filtration.
Clearly something caused a large portion of the bigger dose to gelatinize without clearing the beer, and the beer was noticeably murkier. To me, the density of the dose is an obvious parameter to investigate, if you wanted to understand the causes of the results found in this experiment.
Agree - this is one of those things that gets some people riled up. I’m not convinced of a particular “right” way to do it, but in my experience gelatin fining has been able to give me at least most of the things I’m able to achieve in a traditional “lagering” period, but in less time. YMMV and I certainly haven’t organized large sensory panels to confirm that.
There’s some great info about flocculation characteristics from the Wyeast site here:
https://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_clarification.cfm
Unfortunately there’s a fair amount of it that I don’t understand, and what I do understand basically suggests that manipulating any variable (oxygen, temperature, etc) can either get you the desired result, or possibly the opposite. I think their conclusion sums it up best: