Searching for clarity on unfined beers

At this year's Woking beer festival a number of unfined cask beers were available. Though some impressive claims have been made for the improvements in flavour that come from not adding finings to beer I'm rather dubious about them. As far as I know there's only been one paper published which compared the taste of fined to unfined beer and it found no difference. That's not to say there isn't any effect, but I suspect it's a minor one. To investigate this further I took the opportunity to do some more research.

The first beer I tried was certainly hazy enough that in normal circumstances I'd be eyeing it suspiciously.

There were no problems with the taste though. It wasn't outstanding, but there weren't any off flavours either. Another beer in the popular pale and hoppy style.

Much to my surprise the next one was crystal clear:

Some darker malts were used in the making of it but there was not the slightest hint of haze. Unfortunately it was a bit flat. Now I don't know it this was due to how the beer left the brewery or how the cask was handled at the festival. But I couldn't help but wonder if with an unfined beer this clear the yeast count was too low to get a secondary fermentation in the cask.

The last one I tried was a deliberately murky saison from a local brewery:

I've tried this one from the bottle with and without the yeast and I had to admit it tasted better with. It was also great in the cask and had plenty of condition.

So a bit of a mixed bag from this investigation. Not fining may improve some beers, it may make some worse, or it may make little difference. As ever more research is needed.