Cloudy Beer In Keg

[hydroboy]

Hi All,

Kegged a beer in a hurray the other night before going interstate. Got back after a weekend away (48 hours after kegging) and the beer is pouring very very cloudy. It looks terrible. I think I made a few mistakes when transferring this beer to keg.

1) I used a siphon, perhaps dragging more of the yeast cake up then the way I normally do it (through the fermenter tap).
2) I added the gelatine to the beer at 18 degrees, not after I had cooled it down.

Any suggestions for what I should do to try and clear this beer up?

Initial thoughts,

1) I have not waited long enough, leave it another few days...
2) Add some more gelatine now that it is cold (and partially carbonated?)
3) Transfer the beer to another keg. Not sure if there is a way of doing this that will improve the clarity of the beer.

Comments appreciated.

 

[joshuahardie]

How much does the look of the beer bug you?

All the rubbish will settle out over time, and say if you left it for a week, you might find that the fist few glasses would be cloudy, but the clarity of the beer will improve over the life of the batch.

If you are concerned about it, you could rack the beer to another keg, filter it, gelatine it etc. It really depends how much you dislike the look of your cloudy brew.

 

[hydroboy]

How much does the look of the beer bug you?

All the rubbish will settle out over time, and say if you left it for a week, you might find that the fist few glasses would be cloudy, but the clarity of the beer will improve over the life of the batch.

If you are concerned about it, you could rack the beer to another keg, filter it, gelatine it etc. It really depends how much you dislike the look of your cloudy brew.

Pulled 4 glasses out, all of them were extremely cloudy. A bit of cloudiness (eg coopers pale) doesn't bother me but this was feral, it was like muddy water.

Any recommendations for how to rack from the keg? I was thinking siphon again but being careful to avoid the bottom of the keg.

 

[The Giant]

Give it a week in the fridge and the yeast should all settle down and should start pouring clearly I would think.

I've only done a few kegs but all the beers for the first few days were a bit cloudy, after a week they really cleared up. its just like cold conditioning and getting all the yeast to settle down the bottom.

 

[joshuahardie]

If you were going to rack off this keg ordinarily i would recommend making a jumper line and transferring from the beer out of one keg to the beer out of another.

But seeing as you are saying there is just oodles of sediment, perhaps giving it a few more days to settle and carefully siphoning would be the way to go.

Just sounds like one of those unlucky things we have all done from time to time.
Happens to the best of us.

 

[The Giant]

Personally, I cold condition for a week
then add finings for the last day or 2 of the cold condition

When trfing it use a long tube from the fermenter tap to the the bottom of your keg, start slowly as to not stir everything up

Carb the keg up and in a few days u should start having pretty clear beer

 

[mickpc]

Sounds like a little longer in the fermenter wouldnt have done it any harm either.

Mick

 

[hydroboy]

Nah, it was in the fermenter for plenty of time, over two weeks. I think it was more to do with the siphon picking up the yeast cake from the bottom.