It’s time to start cold-crashing Sarka today, so I took the opportunity to add some Polyclar 730 in order to try and prevent chill-haze later on by dropping out all those protein lumps.

The procedure was pretty straight forward even though I’m fermenting at 12 PSI. Simply add 10g of Polyclar to a sanitised 1 litre PET bottle (10 – 15g advised for a 25 litre batch, I’ve just 23 litres in the Fermzilla) and then pressurise to 12 PSI, matching the FV. Connect a line between both vessels’ liquid-out posts, click a tap onto the PET bottle’s gas post, and give it a blip. The reduction in pressure in my “donkey bottle” soon had beer flowing in via the Fermzilla’s floating dip tube, and when I was 80% full I disconnected the tap, stopping the flow between both vessels.

At this point it was time to give the PET bottle a good shake in order to mix the fine Polyclar powder, but no matter how much I agitated the contents I still saw lumps floating about. Leaving it to sit for a few minutes helped, and subsequent shakes momentarily filled the PET bottle with a slightly more cloudy haze which then separated out to settle on the bottom.

Transferring the mixture back to the Fermzilla was as easy as giving the bottle a vigorous shake while applying pressure to the gas-in post, resulting in a flow of liquid back to my FV. It was all very easy, but I’m wondering how effective that Polyclar will be, given that it almost immediately started to settle in the collection jar despite some very obvious mixing as soon as it left the floating dip tube. Oh well, let’s see how she looks after a few days of cold-crashing.