clearing with gelatin

I've been using gelatin finnings to help clear my wine for quite some time and started using it for beer and I'm quite happy with the result. The beer clears much faster and I think has a nicer look to the finished product.. Anyways my question is can I use regular food grade gelatin or do I have to buy brewers gelatin? The reason I ask is that the home brew store charges and arm and a leg for a tiny container and the grocery store does not... I'm really not convinced there is a difference.


THANKS!

kip said:

I've been using gelatin finnings to help clear my wine for quite some time and started using it for beer and I'm quite happy with the result. The beer clears much faster and I think has a nicer look to the finished product.. Anyways my question is can I use regular food grade gelatin or do I have to buy brewers gelatin? The reason I ask is that the home brew store charges and arm and a leg for a tiny container and the grocery store does not... I'm really not convinced there is a difference.


THANKS!

Click to expand...

There is no difference. Just make sure not to pick up wild cherry flavored gelatin.

BierMuncher said:

There is no difference. Just make sure not to pick up wild cherry flavored gelatin.

Click to expand...

What's wrong with cherry flavored gelatin? I think it adds character to my brews.

Regular Knox brand unflavoured gelatin works fine for me when I use it.

How much do you use in a batch?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/gelatin-finings-53912/

Scroll down a little bit, then read BierMuncher's post. He details it very well.

+1 on the Knox brand unflavoured. I missed using my irish moss last year on my IPA and the gelatine saved my ass and produced a nice clear beer. I definitely noticed a difference in the trub though, so when siphoning make sure to avoid sucking up any.

A trick I came up with for not sucking up any trub is to put a small screw into the red nub on the bottom of the siphon hose... It lifts it up maybe an extra 1/4 inch but it makes quite a difference.

kip said:

A trick I came up with for not sucking up any trub is to put a small screw into the red nub on the bottom of the siphon hose... It lifts it up maybe an extra 1/4 inch but it makes quite a difference.

Click to expand...

I just use a clothes pin. Then I can adjust according to how thick the trub is.

I love Irish Moss, started to use Gelatin. what happens if you use both irish moss 10 min end of boil and gelatin in secondary. or is this too much clearing agents

You will be fine. The IM settles out in the boil kettle and is left behind with the trub. Even if you dump all of your trub into the primary it will still settle out and will not affect the gelatin at all.

Michael

Enjoy the gelatin, that stuff works magic! +1 on reading up on BM's thread, all the user info is there.

i am using bottle conditioning for most of my beers. I am not a big fan of irish mos, gelatin or other clearing agents. time and patience will clear your beers anyway. I think when using Irish moss and gelatin together you end up with taking to much yeast out of suspension for bottling conditioning and carbonation. When kegging en forced carbonating i think it is not much of a problem.

But again, i no big fan, i am a kind of purist and believe that beer shout only contain Malt, water, hops and yeast and only a little herbs in some style's.

stinkmuis said:

I think when using Irish moss and gelatin together you end up with taking to much yeast out of suspension for bottling conditioning and carbonation.

Click to expand...

It's is misinformation -- it's not true.

Bigbeergeek, can you explain? Irish Moss wil flock down strings of protien, yeats forms i kind of same strings and wil be flocked down as wel i figured? using more clearing agents will drop even more yeast en protien out of your beer?

I experienced that it takes much more time to carb beers on the bottle when using irish moss then when i dont use it. So i stopped using it. How was i wrong?

I'm a bottler and I used gelitin and whirlfloc (Irish moss) on a red, and it took no longer to carbonate. The only difference I noticed was clearer beer! This was the first beer I used gelitin in and just put it in the bottling bucket after preparing it according to directions with the priming sugar sulition and racked the beer on top of them both. Worked great. I'll def be doing this again!