Bottle or keep conditioning, or add fining products?

Just as a point of reference for future beers, especially to avoid risk of oxidation, don't use a secondary. They are un-needed unless you are bulk aging a beer and want to take it off the yeast cake. You can add dry hops to the primary directly. Also, 5 days in primary is too short, I would let it go at least 2 weeks before racking. I have no idea about finings though, so I will leave that to others who have used them. I would bottle if it is ready and FG is stable, the beer will clear with time in the cold fridge.

 

I would give it some more time, and/or cold crash. I don't think anyone would advise using finings on a first batch. At least I wouldn't. You don't need to worry about autolysis. At least not in just a few weeks. And soapy off flavors come from compounds found in kettle trub (not from autolysis). Hopefully you didn't dump all the contents of the kettle into the fermenter. And even if you did, I wouldn't worry about soap just yet.

 

Nope. If you are in and out then you are fine. Even when fermentation winds down, the yeast are still active cleaning up compounds in the beer that we don't want like diacetyl or acetaldehyde. Removing from yeast will leave these compounds in the beer. Also, they still release some CO2 as they do this. Putting hops into the primary will create nucleation sites which will release some of the CO2 in solution back into the head space as well. For your next batch leave it alone, and observe that the airlock will still do some slow bubbling even 2 weeks in (if the system is sealed well).

 

Looks ready to me. You won't really ever get the beer totally clear from all the stuff on the walls and in suspension without some swirling followed by a long cold crash. Just leave behind that slurry at the bottom when you rack.

 

I say... it's your first batch, just bottle it. After it carbs you can put it in the fridge and it will clear on it's own in a few weeks. A cold crash in a bottle if you will.

 

I don't remember when I did secondary, lately I realize that "Time and calender" can do it for me, while I spend my resources on brow new stuff and gain more experience. In other words simplify some parameters, on the same time have more control on others.

So much fun.

 

I wouldn't even mess with it to be honest. Learn the process and get it down before you try to do stuff like cold crashing and finings. Cold crashing is easier to do in a bottle or a keg.