Using liquid pectin as a fining agent?

[Certo]

Hello. This is my first post in this forum, and please forgive me, but I don't even brew my own beer, but this will be changing soon! Also, I apologise if this breaks forum rules, as it has a sort of a commercial slant, but it is a genuine enquiry for help.

We are a small UK family business, that produces the product known as Certo, which is a liquid pectin, made from citrus fruits. It is used typically for making jams, marmalades and jellies and ensuring that they set easily without boiling away the colour and flavour.

We have been contacted a couple of times over the years (and again very recently), by people asking if Certo would work as a fining agent in brewing. We have never tried it, but my initial reaction was that it wouldn't work, and you need pectinase to break down the pectin.

I then came across an article from the US, where a home brewer had actually used a liquid pectin as a fining agent, and it worked very well. Here is the article if you are interested: Liquid Pectin as a Fining Agent

Certo is a vegan product, so if it works, has an obvious benefit over gelatin based products used as fining agents.

Does anyone on here have any experience with using liquid pectin as a fining agent, or would anyone here like to give it a go, if we send you some Certo?

Thank you

Rowan

 

[foxy]

Pectic enzyme is available here and the US as a clearing agent for beer and wine. Not pectin.

 

[peebee]

Appears people have been looking into this: Pectin - An Alternative to Isinglass for Fining Beer

I'm not convinced enough to try it yet, but I've heard of some brewers putting their trust in far kookier ideas.

 

[Drunkula]

@Certo I'd give it a go and do a split batch experiment if you like. This would be on a homebrew scale basis.

Immediate ideas are do a 2 x 3 way split with no finings vs gelatine vs certo and have one batch cold crashing, the others at room temperature. For simplicity I'd put the beer into 2 litre plastic bottles so you could observe the speed of sedementation and clarity.

As well as those tests I'd stagger tastings over weeks and months to see if there was any degradation of hop character.

Again note : On a homebrew scale so the intial test would be on 24 litres. So each split would have 2 x 2 litres for sedementation observations and 8 x 500ml bottles for age testing.

 

[Stuart Wilson]

"Brülosophy | They Who Drink Beer Will Think Beer" Brülosophy

I would contact this guy....as you can see from his web site, he often does exactly the sort of thing you suggest.