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Ideally when using irish moss, very little of it should end up in the fermentor. It's a good idea to let the boil settle for 10-15 minutes after flameout so that the moss and the proteins it's attracted have time to fall to the bottom of the kettle. But even if it does make it to the fermentor, it won't have any significant affect on the yeast: The irish ...

Yes it can take away flavor and aroma. If you really want to keep the beer as fresh and vibrant as possible, then cold crashing is the best option. Not that gelatin is bad - but in my experience it does "round off" some of the flavours, making them less intense. I actually enjoy this, since it reduces the amount of conditioning by a couple of weeks. The ...

Adding finings is a waste of effort with this style when brewed correctly. It is possible to have too much residual haze stuff in the beer and it will be super cloudy, and maybe even chunky. If your normal pale ales are cloudy, maybe finings are a good idea with this wiesse attempt. That said, some people actually add a little flour to the boil late to ...

Fining are wonderful, especially on a home brew scale. The majority of them are just organic material, and I don't any reason a normal omnivore would worry. If you refuse to drink beer with isinglass, you shouldn't be eating fish sauce or Worcestershire either:D Some finings like polyclar are plastics, and not FDA approved for consumption. The idea is ...

I've kept Whirlfloc for nearly a year and it was still fine. I don't see why you couldn't keep it even longer. Although some people say you don't need it for dark beers, I disagree. Even in a very dark beer you can see it it's clear or not. I use it in every batch. I don't think it's a deal breaker if you don't use it, but based on the times I've ...

I view the stripping of flavor and aroma by gelatin (or other finings or practices such as filtering) as a recipe issue not a "should I or shouldn't I" concept. For example, if you want to use gelatin to clarify but you think you've lost some dry hop character; next time you need to up the amount of dry hops. Simple as that. Same can be said for all the ...

I use whirlfloc in pretty much every brew apart from some wheats where the protein haze is part of the style. Shelf life is about 2 years (see below.) Even though the recipe calls for whirlfloc, you can use either whirlfloc or irish moss, both are kettle finings and contain the same active ingredient - kapa-carrageenan (Wikipedia lists other types and ...

If you can get away with unfined and unfiltered and you don't care too much about appearance, quite often the result is fantastic on the flavor end of things. Just like with wine, in the beer world there are people who don't mind cloudiness if they get all the good flavors they want from a beer. With my wine and with my beer, I prefer to go the ...

I would believe that you would remove too much of the remaining yeast and thus you beer wouldn't properly carbonate. If you did do this you could use a highly flocculant yeast strain at bottling such as Nottingham dry yeast which clears quite quickly. I would suggest using irish moss or whirlfloc tablets to see if that helps with the clarity.