Will it work?: Gelatin in No Chill tank to remove cold break

So I'm trying to think of an easier way to remove cold break from my No Chill beers. I've tried siphoning out the clean wort from my No Chill tank, but for me, the auto siphon gets clogged up all the time with break/hop material and is totally useless.

What I normally do is dump my entire No Chill tank of wort into a bucket lined with a paint strainer (all sanitized of course), and then pull the paint strainer up and out, which drags out all the particles from the wort. The clean wort is then poured into the fermenter or fermented right in that bucket. The problem with this is that the cold break is too fine to be caught by my paint strainer and all ends up in the fermenter.

I normally don't care, but I've started doing lagers now, and so I'd like to minimize cold break to some degree.

ANYWAY, does anyone have an opinion on using Gelatin in the No Chill tank itself prior to pitching & fermentation? Maybe adding the gelatin to the tank as I'm sealing it up right after the hot wort goes in? I can make sure the wort is 170-180F before I transfer it, but I don't think I'd want it any cooler than that.

So would doing this process make the gelatin settle down at the bottom of the tank, and drag down all the cold break with it? If so, I would siphon off the wort from the jello/break goo and proceed to pitching.

Any thoughts on this process would be appreciated!

I just can't think of a way you could use gelatin and get it to set quickly enough for it to actually be useful. you'd really be chancing an air-borne infection if you waited a couple days for it to really do it's stuff. some fining agents can knock down a very large amount of sediment in ~24 hours, so if getting a pot with a braid is out of the question, i'd give something like that a try.

japhroaig said:

you'd really be chancing an air-borne infection

Click to expand...

It would be in a sealed no-chill tank, so there's no risk of an air borne infection (except BOTULISM BWAHAHA). I can leave it in the tank for several days as needed (the Aussies leave it for weeks with good effect). Would that give the gelatin enough time to settle and drag down the sediment?

it *should*. i give no guarantees, but as long as you are careful when you move it out, the sediment and break *should* settle. take lots of pics!

From http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/finishin.asp

The most common positively charged (+) particulate is protein, although some metallic compounds also carry positive charges. Protein is easily removed using negatively charged (-) fining agents such as tannin, yeast, bentonite, and Kieselsol. There are, however, numerous negatively charged particulates, including tannin, phenolics, anthocyanins, yeast, and bacteria. These are removed using positively charged fining agents such as gelatin, albumin, casein, Isinglass, chitin (Chitosan), and Sparkolloid.

"Protein is easily removed using negatively charged (-) fining agents such as tannin, yeast, bentonite, and Kieselsol. There are, however, numerous negatively charged particulates, including tannin, phenolics, anthocyanins, yeast, and bacteria."

This is *wonderfully* ambiguous, so much so to be just about useless
Not picking on you shelly, just sayin'. To really precipitate using a two stage fining agent + gelatin seems to work pretty good for me.