You are welcome, Brother Steppedonapoptop!
First of all, thank you Ken!!! And I’m really glad I started this thread, I needed answers an apparently so did alot of us.
I ended up just buying some isinglass to add to a beer I have aging right now. It’s the dried variety, any suggestions on that.
[quote=“HellBound”]First of all, thank you Ken!!! And I’m really glad I started this thread, I needed answers an apparently so did alot of us.
I ended up just buying some isinglass to add to a beer I have aging right now. It’s the dried variety, any suggestions on that.[/quote]
I tried liquid isinglass a very long time ago and I don’t even remember what the results were. I had to keep it cold, IIRC but I don’t remember much else. My advice would be to follow the steps that came with the product or possibly Google it and see if other brewers on other forums have had some discussions on it. I saw some stuff at one of my LHBSs the other day… it was called SuperKleer or SuperSparkle or some such thing. They continue to come out with new products so you never know what’s out there. Cheers.
What do you use? It obviously works rather well.
Cheers
I picked up some gelatin this week, I’m really excited to see how clear my beer will be!
I use gel in a very similar way with the exact same results.
I use one pack of Knox gel in 1 cup of cold water (from fridge filter) then heated (not boiled). I add that to the cold keg after carbonation and just do a quick stir. Clear beer in 3-5 days. The only time I see the gel again is if I drink the keg slowly. You’ll see little bits at the bottom of the glass after a couple months when the keg is almost empty.
[quote=“HellBound”]What do you use? It obviously works rather well.
Cheers[/quote]
Just plain gel that I pick up from the LHBS… LD Carlson or whatever.
[quote=“HellBound”]What do you use? It obviously works rather well.
Cheers[/quote]
Just plain gel that I pick up from the LHBS… LD Carlson or whatever.
Just remember that the pics I posted were of beers where a number of clarifying processes were done… not just gel. Gel is one part of the overall push to get clear beer but all of the other things are important too. There have been times where I messed up my mash pH (or wasn’t paying attention to it) or something else happened where I had pesky cloudiness that even gel couldn’t wipe out. So it’s all of these things that need to be done. I’ve been brewing this way for a long time so it’s just part of my process. Other brewers will tell me that it’s too much trouble and too many things to worry about just for clear beer but since I’ve been doing it all along, it just seems like part of the process. Again, there is a CLEAR BEER section on my site, link below, go to GENERAL BREWING INFORMATION and scroll down to the KOLSCH glass and the section PRODUCING CLEAR BEER. All of the steps are laid out there. There’s also a WATER section which has some additional information. Cheers.
I’ve never looked at my mash pH. Would the strips at the homebrew store work?
Is your website the Mayfair site?
[quote=“paultuttle”]I’ve never looked at my mash pH. Would the strips at the homebrew store work?
Is your website the Mayfair site?[/quote]
Yep, Mayfair Court Brewhouse (link below). The strips at the LHBS are probably not going to help much. A lot of hardcore brewers use a pH meter but many others (including me) get by with ColorpHast strips which can be found online for about $20 for 100 of them. Look HERE
http://www.sanitationtools.com/products.asp?category=72&attriberror=true&Product=1391
and get the ones with the shortest range (I think it’s 4.0 to 7.0). At first, I was skeptical about this. But this is a big deal… making sure that your mash pH and the pH of your batch sparge is correct. I do not fly-sparge and I don’t pretend to know about it so if you’re a fly-sparger, I’m sure that another fly-sparger can direct you on proper fly-sparging pH. If you’re interested, go to the BREWING WATER page on my site and scroll down to the section for PALE COLORED BEERS and HARD WATER. There are links there to a water thread by AJ DeLange with contributions by Martin Brungard and there is also a link to Kai’s pH page. Dialing in the proper mash pH is step #1 in achieving clear beer. There is a pic on Kai’s site of wort that was boiled at 5.5 pH and another wort boiling at 6.5 pH. The 5.5 wort is clear and light. The other wort (pH too high) is cloudy and a darkish, gray color. I have been paying close attention to this over the past 20 batches or so and the results are ULTRA CLEAR BEER. After arming myself with this info on pH and also the water information, I feel like I have a lot more tools in my brewing toolbox. Cheers.
Wow information overload for a newbie. I was reading on another site about building a filter system and was curious if its frowned upon, or is it ok to do. I plan on bottle carbing my first batch and am already being kind of anal about stuff like this but thats just my nature. Lots of great info thanks for all the great contributions my next batch i will have a drain on my kettle, but also will adding ice cold water to the wort during cooling drop most the sediment out like when making cowboy coffee?
Augh! I added gelatin to my kegged, carbonated IPAs last night, the ones with some serious haze to them, and tonight nearly all my aroma is gone. Both of these were dry hopped. I assume the gelatin stripped out all the dry-hop goodness?
I’ll try gel again, but in the secondary, BEFORE dry hopping.
Now I need to research methods for dry hopping in the keg, to restore the aroma.
[quote=“Silentknyght”]Augh! I added gelatin to my kegged, carbonated IPAs last night, the ones with some serious haze to them, and tonight nearly all my aroma is gone. Both of these were dry hopped. I assume the gelatin stripped out all the dry-hop goodness?
I’ll try gel again, but in the secondary, BEFORE dry hopping.
Now I need to research methods for dry hopping in the keg, to restore the aroma.[/quote]
If you dry hop a cloudy beer and then clarify, you’re wasting hops. All that hop matter will stick to the yeast cells and drop / filter out with them.
