Adding finings when bottling

[quiff]

Hi all,
At the weekend I'm planning to bottle my last brew which, due to juggling decorating, dinner and brewing, I forgot to add the Irish moss
Is it worth adding any kind of finings when bottling and will this affect the speed of carbonation?

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Finings will create a very unstable yeast layer in the bottom of the bottle so you'll probably end up pouring cloudy beer. To me that seems worse than risking a chill haze.

[escapizm]

i second that...

I mistakenly added gelatine to bottled beer and the sediment stuck to the side of the bottles rather than compacting. It did settle after ages but remained light and fluffy when i poured

[crookedeyeboy]

No copper finings means protein will make itself evident later on although this again depends on how efficient your boiler and filter are at removing the protein during the transfer from boiler to FV.
Its not gelatine finings you want its auxiliary to drop out the protein but to be honest I wouldnt worry too much, like I say if you feel that your wort is nice and bright you should get away with it later on.

[quiff]

Thamks for your advice guys.
I'll just cold condition up until christmas and if I get hazy beer.........never mind

[Carpking]

Bottle and prime as normal and you might find the beer drops pretty clear anyway. I've forgotten irish moss before and gotten away with it. Fingers crossed.

[NickK]

No, I wouldn't worry about it. My current bottled Pils are clear but haze when chilled. To me it's only cosmetic.

If I was wanting to clear further, I'd move the beer into a secondary fermenter and add finings before bottling a week later. Too much fuss unless you're a perfectionist and would probably easier force filtering but that would remove the yeast too.

[quiff]

Yeah it's been in secondary for a week and I'm bottling this weekend. I'm just weighing up the pros and cons of fining when bottling. My worry is that the finings will pull the yeast down before carbonation has finished. Can this be the case?

[Bribie]

Gelatine won't cure or prevent chill haze. Gelatine will drag down the yeast but not affect the polyphenols that cause chill hazes. Also, as Graham Wheeler points out in his books with Gelatine straight into the bottles you can get 'fluffy bottoms' A really effective chill haze preventer is PVPP - in Australia we get it in the form of Polyclar. I get mine from Craftbrewer

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=726

who deliver worldwide (no affiliation) but I expect UK suppliers would have similar products. I've never used it in the bottle, it's recommended to be thoroughly mixed with a small quantity of water and put into cold conditioning beer, e.g. at the end of the lagering process. Works great. See my avatar