How long for hops/yeast to clear in fermentation bucket?

[IHN]

First post, hope someone can help.

I'm attempting to get into the world of homebrew, and after trying a 'normal' kit brew, which went okay, I've got a Malt Miller Mini Mash kit on the go at the moment, which needed some grain steeping and hop boiling.

The brew seemed to go okay and it's been in the brew fridge for two weeks, at 19-20degC. The latest gravity reading is 1010, from an OG of 1045. It can't be far from done, but it's still, really, really cloudy.

Do I just need to give it time to clear before racking? It'll be going in bottles.

Any advice appreciated.

[HTH1975]

If you can lower the temperature down below 10C it would help to clear the beer. Alternatively, try some finings.

[IPA]

Transfer to another fv. Leave it for five days then add gelatine fining and leave it for another three days. Transfer to bottling bucket add priming sugar (2.5 gr per litre) disolved in a little boiling water and gently stir. Then bottle. A little tip. The first bottle should be a sanitised 500 ml fizzy water bottle. You can then check how carbonation is proceeding simply by squeezing the bottle. When it is rock hard the beer is carbonated.

[Meatymc]

Or a combination of the 2 - fine with gelatin, drop to below 10C then allow it to drift back up to around 17/18C before bottling.

[cwrw gwent]

If you're bottling the beer I'd just go ahead and wait for it to clear naturally. Barrels tend to take their time but my bottled beer goes from opaque to fairly clear after three days and crystal clear within a week.

[HTH1975]

It depends on the yeast if the beer will naturally drop bright with time. Some yeasts just don’t want to clear. If you WANT clear beer, then adding finings is a easy and simple way to do this (combined with crash cooling).

[orlando]

Or a combination of the 2 - fine with gelatin, drop to below 10C then allow it to drift back up to around 17/18C before bottling.

Finings tend to work quicker if the beer is already chilled. Try both ways and see which achieves your desired outcome. This guys experience echoes my own. This article has a lot more to say about fining in general and has some pertinent comments for those following the Protafloc thread, i.e. how much to use.

[Robwalkeragain]

Without boring everyone with science too much, protein haze is caused by polyphenols bonding with polypeptides...cooling the beer as low as possible will link them together creating a bigger surface area for the gelatine to work, then you add the fining and it'll glue it all together and drop it all to the bottom.

TLDR; get the beer below your intended serving temperature first, and you'll be fine.

[Northern Brewer]

The short answer to the headline question is - it depends, on the beer, on how much hops you've added, and in particular what sort of yeast it is. You don't want a wheat beer to clear at all, whereas some British cask yeasts drop like cottage cheese.

A bit of Irish moss/Protafloc during the boil will help drop out proteins which form a fine haze, but won't affect eg yeast which has the opposite charge.

[orlando]

won't affect eg yeast which has the opposite charge.

Isinglass, gelatine, or Stokes Law (AKA time) sorts that.

[IHN]

Thanks folks.

I've dropped the brew fridge temp down to 5degC, it's been like that for a couple of days and seems to be getting a lot better, if not quite there. I've not had chance to put it into another FV yet though, it's still in the original.

I'm tempted to rack and bottle it at the weekend, and leave it to settle/clear in the bottle. Does that seem sensible?

This was the yeast:

https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product ... yeast-12g/

[orlando]

5 days is better but a couple is better than nothing, so if time is tight go for it. Are you going to use finings?

[scotsloon]

What you desperately need to avoid is bottle bombs. you said on the 24th of Nov that the SG was 1.010. The rule of thumb is to check your SG over a 3 day period and if it hasn't changed then its probably OK to bottle. If its still in the FV can you take another SG reading and if its the same you should be OK to go ahead and bottle.

[IHN]

[i]5 days is better but a couple is better than nothing, so if time is tight go for it. Are you going to use finings?[/I]

I dropped it down to about 9degC on, I think, Monday, and dropped it down further to 5degC on Wednesday, so it'll have had a good few days at low temp by the time it's bottled on probably Sunday.

[I]What you desperately need to avoid is bottle bombs. you said on the 24th of Nov that the SG was 1.010.[/I]

I checked it again 48 hours later and it was steady at 1.010, so I'm happy nothing will explode. Well, ya know, ish