Clearing homebrew

[Juddy in the Charente]

And when I say clearing I mean getting rid of the haze, i'm not looking for help in necking the 40 pints of Norfolk Wherry Ale!

The beer's ready but still a tadge cloudy, i've been trying to find a way of making sure it's clear the next time (not too bothered about the current brew as it's in a pressure barrel and I don't want to lose the gas)

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[tim_n]

You can either put it somewhere chilly and the yeast would just drop out or add something like Isinglass finings (or their equivalent).

Obviously if you put the isinglass finings in you'll release the pressure so you'll need a CO2 injector.

Putting it somewhere chilly has always worked for me. The haze doesn't affect the brew much though.

You can also just leave it for a long time. It'll settle naturally and the yeast will just drop out too. The flavour will mature too and taste loverly.

[CyberPaddy66]

Do you mean your beer is still cloudy or do you mean it has a chill haze?

Cloudy beer is a simple one to cure, leave it alone until it clears and you'll be rewarded with a nice clean mature pint for your efforts, as a rule of thumb beer should be left in the maturing stage (after fermentation and racking into it's final container) for 1 week in the warm (to promote secondary fermentation and create the CO2 required to pressurise the container) and 3 weeks in the cold (to allow the beer to absorb some of the CO2 making the final beer fizzy) for it to clear and age properly, I find my beer tastes best at the 6 week maturing stage and is usually crystal clear by the time I get round to drinking it.

Chill haze is also simple to fix but can only be done before fermentation has taken place, a chill haze is when your beer goes foggy when it's cold but clears up slowly as the beer warms to room temperature. The cause of the chill haze is the proteins in the beer that should have dropped out with the yeast being left behind and at cold temperatures they become visible to the naked eye, while they will not effect the taste of a beer they will make it look funny. To cure a chill haze you need to boil your wort for about 15 minutes with some Irish Moss, Profloc or Whirflock in there, this grabs onto the proteins in the hot break (foaming at start of boil) and cold break (clumping when chilled quickly) sections of the boil thus keeping them out of your fermenter.

I hope this helps

[Juddy in the Charente]

Thanks for the help, it seems the leaving it in the barn method has done the trick although there wasn't much left to clear as I couldn't leave it alone!!