Windsor - time to clear in barrel?

[pduk]

Hi all,

After quite a few successful all grain brews using S04, I decided to experiment with different yeasts. I made up the Youngs Special recipe from GW, with Windsor yeast, and stuck it in a bottom tap kingkeg about 8 weeks ago. I've just drawn off a half pint as a late Friday afternoon reward, and it's still cloudy! Now, I've heard that this strain isn't exactly quick to clear, to say the least, but I was wondering whether anyone had an opinion on when it might be likely to be ready... or whether I've cocked something up and ended up with very cloudy beer, as I did once before when using a duff thermometer and mashing at far too low a temperature...

Cheers

Paul.

PS it does taste rather good, and very different to any of the S04 brews.

[flything]

I've used Windsor a couple of times and really like it, generally I just leave the beer in the primary for another week or so after FG has been reached and drop the temp down to 10c, it's then normally pretty clear before I transfer to a corny keg, another three weeks at that temp and the beer is bright. I do have the advantage that I can force carbonate in the corny keg though.

You could crash cool the keg and see if that works, otherwise next time cool in the fermenter and then when you rack to the keg repitch a highly flocculating strain, S-04 would work well, along with the priming sugars.

[pduk]

Thanks for the reply, flything. I would never have thought of your idea of cooling/clearing in the fermenter then pitching a different yeast for priming in the keg. Interesting.

I don't have the facilities to cool the keg as you suggest, so I'll keep trying it as it is every week or so (it's a hard life) and will post a picture here when it's finally clear

Paul.

[flything]

You could use finings such as gelatine of course, I've never found the need but that would work, if you were careful you could do that in the keg (as long as you have some way of topping up the co2).