Bottle Conditioning & Fining with Gelatin

[c0nsumer]

I've been digging around for the last hour, trying to find an answer to these questions, but I'm not having much luck. What I'm trying to determine is, if one uses gelatin for fining beer, how long should they leave it in the secondary? And if so, how should they prepare the gelatin?

My thoughts were to either leave it in the secondary for a short amount of time, perhaps two days, so that most precipitate would settle out, but there would still be enough yeast left suspended to carbonate the beer. The second idea is to just let it settle in the secondary per usual (1-2 weeks) with the gelatin, and then bottle.My concern is that there won't be enough yeast left to provide carbonation. I've come across this (http://byo.com/mrwizard/1277.html) article which asks, but doesn't answer the same question.

Second, I'm trying to determine how to prepare the gelatin for use, if I do use it. I was thinking of dissolving one packet (1/2 oz.) of gelatin in a cup of hot water, then adding this to the secondary and racking the beer on top of it, allowing the swirling caused by the racking to mix the beer and gelatin together.

So, I guess what I'm asking is if anyone can tell me exactly how they've used gelatin as a fining agent, and what their results were when it came to bottle conditioning. Did it work per usual? Did it take extra time? Did you need to add yeast? Any other pointers?

Thanks!

-Steve

[brewmonkey]

Gelatin is a great fining agent. However when ever you use a fining agent or filter your product it should be done at colder then serving temps to ensure that you will remove as much as possible.

As a homebrewer I had limited success with gelatin as a fining agent because I would have to add it at bottling time. Rather then help clear the beer out I found that it was hampering the ability to bottle condition the beer. When I switched to kegging and was false carbonating I saw a big increase in the fining ability of the gelatin.

For kegging I would rack to kegs and take the temp down to below 35F and hold it for 24 hours. I would then pop the top and add the gelatin and hold it for 24-48 hours prior to carbonating. Now when you carbonate you may stir up some sediment but it will drop back out and with the first pint or two it should draw off.

One thing to be cautious of with gelatin is that you do not boil it or mix it at to high of a temp. Doing so will denature it and it will not work. If you have a stick blender I have found that it works best for mixing the gelatin.

200 bloom is the standard gelatin you will see for brewing (but there are other bloom factors) and is IMHO the best general purpose gelatin. You can mess around with some of the others if you are having a difficult time with a particular bloom.

http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue2.3/morris.html

[c0nsumer]

Hmm, based on what I'm reading then, it sounds like if one is going to bottle condition their beer, it would be best to either add the geletain not long before bottling, or right before? Say... With the priming sugar? Or maybe I should instead just let it settle for a week or to in the secondary, per usual? This will be bottled, and I don't have kegging gear in order to force carbonate it...