↠ How to stop cloudy home brew from happening

Cloudy beer can suck visually, but why does it happen? I did a batch of beer and nicely conditioned it and on pouring, it came about cloudier than usual.

It looked like a wheat beer that had been mixed with sawdust.

An imperfection.

Tasted alright though, but I wondered what had caused this to happen? Usually, my brews look deliciously golden...

• Was it because I made a mistake brewing?
• Did I get the temperature wrong?
• Was my yeast off?

Well, the truth is cloudy home brew beer is a common thing and it can occur for various reasons.

First up, as you are bottling your beer, you may notice that beer can be cloudy. This is a very normal part of the process as the beer hasn’t fully become beer yet.

As you bottle, you add some form of priming sugar. The residual yeast in the bottle will feed on that sugar and carbonation war occur. As the sugars are consumed by the yeast, the yeast will fall to the bottom of the bottle and the beer will go "clear".

You’ll obviously be able to tell this has happened as your beer will not be cloudy AND there will likely be some sediment at the bottom of the beer bottle.

Leaving the beer in the fermenter a bit longer than you might usually do so gives your beer time to clear even more.

By letting the yeast do its thing for a longer time, your beer will taste better too.

Do you know what the best trick is to avoid cloudy beer is? 

Cold crashing.

Chilling your beer in a fridge at the end of fermentation will cause yeast to fall to the bottom giving you greatly improved clarity. The short version of cold crashing is that you place the whole 23 litre fermenting drum into a pretty cold fridge and you leave it for several days to allow the cold to do its thing.

You can then bottle or keg in the normal manner.

Conditioning beer is very important

A careful pour from the bottle will usually avoid stirring up the sediment which causes a cloudy glass of beer. 

This is especially so if you have got a perfect level of carbonation – an over-sugared beer means more bubbles which increases the chance of the sediment being stirred up into your pour.

If opening your beer causes the beer to go cloudy because the bubbles stir the sediment up too much, I've found cooling the beer in a fridge for 24 hours can help prevent this quite well.

You can also use finings to 'clear' your beer of unwanted proteins what can also cause cloudiness.

Cooling and refrigeration

One of the reasons why beer does go cloudy is due to improper refrigeration timings and techniques.

The process of storing beer is called laagering (sounds like lager eh?). Lagers are lagers because they are best stored cold.

Nordic Vikings learned this method years ago when they laagered their beer barrels in cold caves over the winter or something...

Refrigeration of storing beer in a cool place helps to clear beer rapidly.

The science behind this is at lower temperatures it is more difficult for the yeast, tannins and proteins in the beer to remain suspended.

Cold stored beer will clear much more rapidly than beer stored at a normal room temperature.

If you intend to lager your beer you must wait until carbonation has occurred. If you cool your beer too soon, you run the risk of disrupting the yeast from its secondary fermentation process and carbonation may not occur (or it will be very slow to do so).

Fining agents can reduce cloudiness

A number of fining agents can be added to the finished beer that will aid in clearing the beer quickly.

These agents work by attaching themselves to the yeast, tannins, and proteins to help them precipitate to the bottom of your fermenter or bottle more quickly.

Plain gelatin can be used quite well. Dissolve it in warm sterile water and add it to your fermenter a few days before bottling.

Polyclar is also a popular product to use.

I also have a sneaky suspicion that gelatin in jelly beans also works to help clear the beer.

Chill haze and the 'cold break'

You may have heard of ‘chill haze’. This is a really common cause of beer cloudiness where the wort has been boiled and the cooling process has not generated enough ‘cold break’. 

The cold break is the proteins from the beer that are precipitated to the bottom of the beer by the cold temperature.

Using a copper wort chiller allows for an effective way to get more cold break forming and thus reduces the chance of chill haze in your finished beer.

German wheat beers are often cloudy and that's just the way it is

If you are making a German style wheat beer, it is natural for a wheat beer to have an element of cloudiness.

Some beers, like German Hefeweizens, use yeasts and ingredients that make the beer cloudy no matter what you do.

So how do the big breweries avoid producing cloudy beer?

It’s a simple trick.

Commercial brewers (including craft beer breweries)  filter their beer.

From it, they take all the live yeast and basically bottle a “lifeless” product. The beer you homebrew and drink still contains live yeast so there’s a much more likelihood of a cloudy home brew happening.

Beer like Steinlager that you buy from commercial brewers (and even craft beer breweries) will have been filtered.

Another handy trick that the home brewer can do to improve their beer is to use a fining agent. 

The agent is usually a form of gelatin or moss (!) and it binds to the yeast and other particles in the beer and drags them down to the bottom of the beer to take their grave as sediment.

Sugar 

Make sure that you do not over sugar your beers. If you do, you run the risk of extra fizzy beer or gushers which can clearly upset the sediment.

A cloudy beer isn’t the end of the world but hopefully, this will give a little insight into why your beer is cloudy and how you can try to clear it up the next time that you brew.

Check out how many lines Darth Maul had in The Phantom Menace.

Leave a Comment cloudy beer, cold crashing, lagering

⇒ Using 'finings' to clear homebrew beer

How to instructions for using 'finings' to clear beer

If you've ever bought a beginner's beer kit it may have come with a sachet of 'finings'. That's basically how I was introduced to them when I got a brewing kit for Christmas.

So this (then!?) inexperienced homebrewer naturally had to ask:

What are beer 'finings' ?

Finings are agents that are usually added at or near the completion of brewing beer to the fermenter.

Their purpose is to remove unwanted organic compounds to help improve the beer clarity - as no one likes cloudy beer.

They are also used for wine, cider, alcoholic ginger beer and non-alcoholic drinks such as juice.

The finings act by precipitating and binding with compounds that reduce beer clarity. They then fall to the bottom of the brewing fermenter drum or carboy and so are effectively removed from the beer.

How do I use beer finings?

If you have made a batch of beer in a drum or carboy, just add in the sachet to the beer, about 3 days before you intend to bottle the beer.

Do it quickly and reseal the drum so that there's no chance of infection occur by way of a stray spider or sneaky germs.

If you have done a boil, you can simply add the finings at the end of that process.

That's all you have to do! Easiest beer making instruction ever eh? It doesn't matter if you've made a stout, ale or lager, the timings are as above.

We've noticed readers of this site often buy the 'Super-Kleer' brand of finings.

What are finings made from?

Finings can be made from all kinds of things. 

Isinglass (biofine) is a clearing agent made from the protein called collagen. It is extracted from the swim bladders of fish!

Ordinary gelatin is an effective fining agent as it will remove proteins and polyphenols. It's similar to isinglass in that it is also collagen agent but the key difference is that gelatin is made from hooved animals.

That's right, if you use gelatin to clear your beer, you are adding horse feet!

Kinda...

You can use un-flavoured gelatin by adding one teaspoon to a cup of hot water, mix and then add gently into the fermenter.

Add the finings a couple of days before you intend to bottle to give the fining time to do its thing

A very popular fining is Irish Moss.

It seems to be a bit of a misnomer as Irish Moss is actually derived from seaweed! Irish moss is added in the last 10-15 minutes of the boil and not generally used with beer kits that go straight into the carboy.

Whirlfloc tablets are also very similar to Irish Moss and can be used in the same way.

There are other fining products that you can use such as Chillguard and Polyclar and silica gels like Kieselsol.

How do finings actually bind with unwanted compounds?

Fining products usually have large molecules that are 'positively' charged.

Think back to your science class days at school!

These molecules attach themselves to negatively charged contaminants (opposites attract remember) and then precipitate them out of the finished beer - and by that we mean they fall to the bottom of your fermenter.

Silica gels like Kieselsol are actually negatively charged! They are basically silicon dioxide products.

So do I actually need to use finings?

The choice is yours and it depends on how much you care about beer clarity.

If you are after clear or cloud free beer, then using finings is one very easy trick to help you with that goal.

If you are adding hops to your beer, you may want to consider it. This is because hops leave polyphenols in the beer which can cause a lack of clarity. Finings will work on the polyphenols as per usual.

Malt also produces polyphenols so finings can take care of any the malt in your beer may produce.

Finings definitely work however it would be fair to say that it's not a necessary part of the brewing process for ordinary home brewers.

If you are intending to enter your beer into a competition where the clarity of beer is considered an important criteria, you'd be silly not to employ this method. 

One thing to beer in mind is that the use of finings does add to the cost per bottle ration of your beer.

It's the same argument for using beer enhancers. You don't need them but they really do improve your beer's mouth feel and all round taste performance.

What about fining wine?

The concept for wine is the same as beer - but sometimes the methods to clear wine are different. The use of gelatine and Isinglass is common but also some perhaps counter-intuitive products like egg whites or casein are used. 

Sparkolloid is a popular fish based fining agent.

A clay made from volcanic ash known as bentonite is pretty a pretty popular means too. It is absorbent so is used to bond with particles in the wine.


Here's some more tips on making clear, cloud free beer. 

7 comments cloudy beer, finings, ginger beer, tricks and tips

How and when to use gelatin for clearing homebrew

Whenever I think of gelatin, I think of horse hooves.

That's right horse hooves.

From the knacker's yard. Gross right?

Well I say jelly is jelly, food is food, and if I need to use the foot of a horse to clear my beer and reduce sediment in the bottle I will!

So, here's the guts of using gelatin to clear your beer.

Basically gelatin acts a fining agent. It combines with the 'leftovers' of the beer brewing process and they fall to the bottom of the fermenter thus clearing the beer.

So how much gelatin should I add to my beer?

Many beer brewers have found that between half and a whole teaspoon per 23 litres or 5 gallons will be a sufficient amount. You will probably get diminishing returns if you use much more.

When do I add the gelatin?

You can add it any time after fermentation and word on the street that it actually works best when the beer is quite cool.

A common timing is to add it a couple of days before you intend to bottle your beer.

How do I add the gelatin?

A good trick is to dissolve it in a half a glass of hot water. You then open up the fermenter or carboy, add the liquid and then shut the fermenter back up.

Do I need to use gelatin if I'm making an ale?

For many people, clarity of beer is important to them. If you are making a dark ale, clarity may not be so important to you.

However, finings do remove leftovers that can impinge on the taste of the beer too. The gelatin helps remove the unneeded proteins and polyphenols from the beer.

Where do I get gelatin from?

Most specialist beer shops will stock fining agents such as gelatin. You can also try your local supermarket as it's used in many cooking recipes. You can totally order it online from Amazon for speedy delivery too.

Gelatin can come in powdered form and sheets.

As Robby the Robot would say 'Beware Will Robinson!'

Make sure you buy unflavoured gelatin.

If you use Jello because you know it has gelatin in it, you might be in for quite the taste surprise. That said, we've been known to use gelatin jelly beans from time to time...

Of course, if you don't wish to use gelatin (maybe because you're trying to make vegan beer?) you can try to use other kinds of finings to clear your beer.

Leave a Comment cloudy beer, finings, gelatin