In either case, one thing that you should aim for prior to adding gelatin is making sure that your beer is cold. Adding gelatin to the keg works just as well.

Though I prefer adding gelatin into the fermenter, it seems that 9 times out of 10 I either forget to or don’t have gelatin on hand, so I end up not adding gelatin until after the beer has been kegged (like the beers in this post). Which means I’m one step closer to being able to drink it! Plus, as I mentioned above, if you add gelatin to the fermenter and you’re not 100% happy with the clarity of your finished beer, you can always add a little bit more to the keg, but this is typically not necessary. Personally, I like adding gelatin into the fermenter because it’s one less step after kegging the beer. I’ve done both with good success and I have also done a combination of the two. Gelatin can be added into the fermenter prior to racking, or can be added into the keg prior to serving. When I asked why, it was because all the beer served in the brewery and taproom is brewed on-site and using gelatin was a quicker and simpler process. I was told that the Pliny the Elder that you find in bottles goes through a filtration process, but the Pliny the Elder that is served in their brewery and taproom is actually clarified using gelatin. I asked if he knew anything about their processes and whether they used filters, fining agents or both. As a double IPA it’s obviously heavily hopped, but it is also one of the most consistently clean IPAs that you can find. We recently brewed a pumpkin ale and an IPA, both of which had hops and other additives added directly into the kettles and the fermenters. The initial beer was a bit hazier than I prefer, so why not do a quick post on how adding gelatin can clear your beer.ĭuring a visit to Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, California, I got talking to the bartender about their Pliny the Elder and its clarity. The question was simple, “how do you get your beer so clear?” Simple answer was – gelatin. This is something that we almost always do when we homebrew, but it wasn’t until a recent question that I even considered writing about it.

How to homebrew beer