Ginger Beer recipe, how do you finish up?

Question

I made a two gallon batch of ginger beer, based on a recipe I found on Stack Exchange. It fermented dry, is quite tasty, but obviously still full of yeast. I plan to make a dry, fizzy, alcoholic drink, do I need to let it clear, prior to priming and bottling. Any insight is appreciated! Thanks, Q

Answer 1

When you bottle it, it will clear up somewhat, this is because when you bottle it to naturally carbonate (with priming sugar), the few weeks you have it resting and in the fridge will be a light cold crash. As long as you don't swirl the bottles prior to pouring you will have a fairly clear beer.

You can cold crash it in the fermenter to clean it up, this should drop the yeast from the beer. The other school of thought is to use a secondary fermentation vessel to let the yeast clear up. This increases your chances of infection however, so I would recommend priming and bottling, then leaving it upright in the fridge for a couple of weeks after it's primed.

Pour slowly to prevent the trub going into your glass, you'll be able to see the trub from the outside of the bottle, you'll probably want to stop pouring with a 1/4" of beer left in the bottom.