Question on Clarification with Gelatin

I want clearer beer! (I'm talking about nice hoppy IPAs here...)

Yes; I know, you can use fining agents (tried Biofine on a few brews with mediocre results), filtration systems (not sure I want to go there), or time, but I want to have my hoppy IPAs clear and bright while still having that fresh intense hop flavor and aroma. This means I don't want to wait 6 or 8 weeks for it to clear - it looses some of the hop intensity after that much time.

Over the past several months I've heard and read various opinions on the topic of clarifying beer using gelatin, and the results looked very promising, and I would like some input from the folks on this forum.

Does anyone here use gelatin?
What is your preferred method?
What results/challenges have you seen?

I tried it once long ago; not sure if I did it right. 

I have friends that do it, and I've seen great results, so if done correctly it does work magic.  The key points I hear most often is that you don't boil it, mix it at 170F (maybe?), and try to spread it across the top, which is tough in a carboy.  I've wondered if you could use a sanitized spray bottle to mist the surface?

Fining is reputed to also strip out some hop character, so only some trials with it would reveal whether it strips out more than does the time you're already spending in lagering it out.  That would be interesting to hear back from you since you could compare side-by-side. 

I *think* it is mostly done on lagers to speed up lagering, and they're aren't too many hoppy lagers other than pilsners. 

Are you positive that the lack of clarity is 100% due to hop haze?  Could other tactics achieve a brighter hoppy beer?  I've gotten much better hot break in the boil by using Ca and Mg, and better cold break by delaying the whirlfloc to five minutes. 

Yeah, I'd also considered tightening the screws on my process - I'm always doing process improvements and I enjoy learning how these things work. I've heard some folks decoct to gain clarity in the finished beer.

I would love to know what else I could do to prevent the chill-haze-forming proteins in the first place. I think I've got my mashing and lautering process down fairly well, my efficiencies are pretty good and I balance my water for the style, control temps and pH throughout the process, and document everything.

There is one thing that concerns me, but I admittedly do not know how this impacts haze-forming proteins; I use an immersion chiller, always have, and I move it around in the kettle during chilling to speed things along, and when I pull it out to move the kettle back into the house, I've effectively stirred all of the break material and hop matter back into solution BUT - I let it sit on my counter for at least 30 minutes to settle before running it to the fermenter, and it looks very clear coming out. Is there something I could tweak here? Is upsetting the break and hop sludge a bad thing?

I don't really want to mess with a rest in the protein range to degrade the chill-producers; our grain is pretty well modified and I don't want to affect head retention. Any other ideas for this part of the process?

In the end, a clear beer has removed low weight proteins, yeast and other particulates. It is also unoxidized and served at the proper temperature. So, how to get all of that....

Hoppier styles are going have pretty good head retention because hop isomers are capable of creating very stable bubbles. So, no protein rest is needed on regular 2-row malt.

"Low weight protiens," is just labspeak for cold break. The more you create, the less will be in the final beer. Cold break is directly related to how fast you can chill wort to pitching temperature. Moving your chilling coil is going to enhance the chilling and is helping you clear the wort. Some brewers enhance this with a recirculating arm and a pump to whirlpool the wort past the coils. I've seen several homebrewers switch to recirculating ice water with a sump pump to crash wort from 100F to their desired temps.

As an aside, plate chillers are extremely effective in creating cold break because they crash wort from 190F to 70F in just a minute or so. With a 90 minute boil and malt at or above 3 lovibond, DMS is not going to be a factor.

For clarifying dry hopped beers, I recommend racking after fermentation is complete and you're sure diacetyl has been reduce. While racking, add some polyclar (pvpp). Heat it to 165F in a little bit of water, put it in the carboy after the first couple of gallons and it'll self mix. Polyclar attracts haze causing proteins and polyphenols as it precipitates. It has no other chemical reactions with beer and won't degrade into something else. If you can chill the beer to 35F to 40F at the same time, you'll improve clarity and make the yeast fall out, as well.

Dryhop the clear beer for maximum aroma impact. A lot of the brightly aromatic commercial IPAs are dryhopped in the bright tank. I find the aroma is most intense at 4 to 6 days. After that, it just degrades into chlorophyllic flavors.

Avoiding oxidation is vital because hop oils are very sensitive to oxygen. Without much melanoidin or yeast to scavenge oxygen, hop aromatics are easy to lose when bottling.

Gelatin is most effective at flocculating yeast. It doesn't really work on polyphenols and proteins. So, my preference was always to use it at bottling to make the yeast stick to the bottom of the bottle. Sierra Nevada has used this technique for their "heritage" brands since they opened. [Pale Ale, Stout and Porter get this treatment. The rest are filtered and force carbonated.]

Bottom line: rack with polyclar; chill; dryhop clear beer; bottle with gelatin.

Great answer when bottling. What I take from this is chill wort ASAP then.
Bottom line: rack with polyclar; chill; dryhop clear beer; bottle with gelatin.
Does this hold true for kegging or do keggers rely on filtering?
I currently bottle.

From what I've read thus far; folks that keg their brew will use the gelatin directly in the keg. After fermentation has concluded and the yeast have cleaned up, crash your brew near freezing for a few days then keg, then make your gelatin mixture and add it at around 120 F or so directly to your cold beer in the keg.

Hit it with a blast of CO2 and let it sit a few days, then force-carb as you normally would without disturbing the keg. Then pull a pint and the gunk should all come out in that first pour, and it should pour clear from then on. Or so I've read. Not tried this yet, but likely will soon (next IPA, maybe?)

You mentioned your IC....have you tried a sump pump to push ice water thru it?  I run tap and gently agitate down to ~100F and switch to ice/water re-circulated in a cooler.  I can hit <60F on all but the hottest summer days.  I've started buying a bag of ice to augment or replace what I get out of the fridge. 

When I first started started out last year, one of the first cool toys (pun intended) I got was an Immersion Chiller - 3/8 x 25 ft copper coil. That first brew with my new IC was a bit disappointing but, it was the middle of the summer and the ground water was in the low 80s! So I went on-line and ordered another one figuring I'd put them in-line - one in a bucket of ice and water, the other in my kettle.

By the time I'd gotten around to brewing again, I had done a bit more research, including looking at your pics, MaltLicker, and also started looking at copper tubing thinking I could build my own, which I promptly did. I wound up putting my two existing 3/8 x 25 ft coils together, tightened the coil size on one and stuffed it inside the other coil, connected them together and that became my secondary (Ice Bucket) coil.

With my new hand-made 3/8 x 50 ft dual coil IC in the pot, and my Frankencoil in the ice bucket, my next batch came down in under 10 minutes to 64 F. I just chilled my Hefe today in 11 minutes from a boil down to 58 F! It was 93 F in my garage!

You are right; the ice water makes a huge difference, but I have not tried pumping in a circuit, like your system. I think it's working OK as is, for now, but I may start looking at plate chillers next...

So it sounds like you're advocating for a good cold-break to promote clarity, no? Is a roughly 10-minute chill sufficient?