To filter, or not to filter?

85 min, 45 min, 15 min, 0 min.

Here you go:  Sheppy's Blog: Arrogant Bastard

EDIT - Simple recipe.

It’s hard to get a red beer that is crystal clear, but you can get close

That’s my red Lager, that’s about as clear as I can get it with bioFine and 48 hours.

This is a perfectly acceptable IPA. In fact, I like it best when it looks like this. I think that it has more hop flavor and aroma when hazy than when clear.

I think clear beer is great, but also overrated at least on the homebrew level. If I drank your kolsch, and it tasted great but had a slight haze. I would not ding you for it. OTOH when you pour a beer and hand it to your friend and it looks like THIS…

Just curious how you mix 500ml of biofine in your fermenter. What I do is have biofine in my BBT and then I transfer from the fermenter to the BBT. I also use whirlfloc in my kettle also get good hot break, it looks like cottage cheese floating in the boil kettle.

Here you go:  Sheppy's Blog: Arrogant Bastard

EDIT - Simple recipe.

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thanks Jon

Great looking pictures, Keith. And I like IPAs best that look like that, too. But that kolsch pic is just crazy -  I want a large quantity of that.

First harvest and dump yeast.  Take a clean, sani and purged 1/4 bbl keg. Take a keg filler and open the keg and pour biofine in the opening. Then, after beer is cold (I lager in FV for at least a week) attach keg via the racking port. Fil keg till about 3/4 full with beer off FV. Shake, then with a pressure of about 30 psi and racking arm pointed UP blow the keg beer/biofine solution back into the fermentor. After it is all blown up close port, recharge keg to 30 psi and open port again to blow large bubbles into FV. Repeast at least once more. In 48 hours you beer will be almost crystal clear. Sometime I have to fine again in BBT.

Thanks. 1st two were Yellowhammer beers (Rebellion and IPA) but the last is Homebrew fined with a little gelatin. Lagered for only 10 days.

Good to know. Thanks!

BTW you may need more or less Biofine depenidng on your yeast.

Yep, I started low and worked my way up to get where I want. Now if I could get wort to ferment in one day and clear so I can carb the next day and package the third day.  ;D

I’m glad I read this thread. I was getting ready to use gelatin for the first time to try to clear my tripel. I think I’ll hold off on that and try it on a different style.

Just curious, why? I think gelatin is the perfect thing to try to clear a triple. Belgian yeasts are often difficult to clear without fining.

Are you talking root beer?

Thanks for sharing.

I bet he’s referring to my post on not fining most Belgian beers, Keith. It’s just personal preference - I’ve fined a few Belgians with gelatin and found that it dropped more of the yeast character than I liked, especially saison. I normally use whirlfloc and crash them after fermentation, and call it good.

I wouldn’t fine a saison, but a tripel? You want that to be brilliantly clear and I don’t find most belgian strains like to drop brilliantly clear without some help or a lot of age. Personally, I like my tripels very fresh.

Yep, agreed on tripel.

Yeah, that’s what I was referring to. But I see the posts today that say to.

I’ll think about it - I was wanting to bottle this weekend. This is the 1st Tripel I’ve made and the sample I drew last night was very good. If I choose not too, I can always clear the next batch of Tripel and use that as a comparison of both clarity and yeast character. It’s a small batch and I’m pretty much the only one who drinks it.

Thanks

you can still bottle. it will clarify with time in the bottle just as well as in the bucket, quicker even as there is less distance for the haze to fall.