Your fining regime will depend upon the type of beer that you are producing, how soon it will be consumed, whether or not you are going to freeze the dickens out of it, and various personal preferences. It may range from no fining at all to the complete full monty. A dark beer usually does not need fining. A haze cannot be seen in a dark beer, and a protein haze cannot be tasted. Yeast can be tasted, but a good yeast should clear down unaided. A pale ale that is to be consumed at normal pale ale drinking temperatures may well only need copper fining. With a lager, or any beer that is to be highly chilled, it will probably be necessary to do something to reduce the possibility of a chill haze.

Typically, for transparent beers at least, copper finings of some sort should be used as a matter of routine. Post-fermentation finings are optional, but if you are in a hurry to drink your beer in shortest possible time, isinglass or gelatine finings should expedite matters. Not all home brewers regularly use post-fermentation finings; some prefer to rely on the passage of time for their beers to clear naturally, only using finings if a beer proves difficult.

A typical fining regime would be to rack the beer from the primary fermenter, after the specific gravity has been stable for twenty-four hours or so, into a racking vessel. Fit a tight-fitting lid and leave to stand for a further twelve or twenty-four hours to allow as much as possible of the surplus or inactive yeast to settle out. Then rack from the racking vessel into your cask. Add your finings to the cask, fit the lid and wait patiently.

If auxiliary finings are to be used, they must be used some hours ahead of isinglass or gelatine finings. Adding auxiliary finings about eight hours ahead of isinglass should be sufficient, but typically twelve or twenty-four hours ahead of isinglass is more usual. In this event it is probably most convenient to add the auxiliary finings to the racking vessel at the same time as racking the beer from the fermenter. Add the isinglass or gelatine at the time of racking from the racking vessel into the cask as normal. It is not usual to add isinglass or gelatine finings to beers destined for bottling because it causes a loose, fluffy yeast deposit that is easily disturbed.

Chill-proofing additives, such as PVPP or silica xerogel, are best added to the racking vessel at the time of filling it, and mixed well in. This enables the beer to be racked off the additives when it is transferred to the cask, which is the approved way using the stuff.

If a casked beer is sluggish in either clearing or coming into condition, roll your cask around your garage floor (or whatever) to redistribute the finings and yeast sediment, and leave it to stand in its normal position again. This will usually wake things up.

With the obvious exception of copper finings, it is quite possible and acceptable to add all other fining materials to a beer at any time after fermentation, even as late as a few hours before drinking. These include auxiliary finings, isinglass finings, and chill-proofing additives. This means that it is possible to perform emergency fining if, rather late in the day, a beer is discovered to not be clearing. There is no real harm in opening a cask to add either auxiliary finings or isinglass finings, or both (12 to 24 hours apart). Pressure will be lost, but it will soon restore itself, and it can be assisted by priming if thought necessary. Indeed, it was common for commercial brewers to add isinglass finings to a cask just before delivery to the pub. Some small brewers may still do this, but as opening a cask to add finings is a manual operation, and can result in beer losses, these days most large commercial breweries meter finings into the cask at the time of automated filling by the cask-filling robots.