Bottle priming 9.0% beer after gelatin fining

Brewed an imperial IPA that hit 9% with S-05. It was in the primary for 3 weeks, racked it onto gelatin for a week, then dry hopped it for a week. I failed to realize that dropping all (well, vast majority) of that yeast out of suspension might make it very hard to carbonate in the bottle.

I'm concerned that its glorious hop aroma will fade while it's waiting to carb up 6-8+ weeks at room temp. Are my fears unfounded? I've been reading about counterpressure filling from my keg, but I have no experience with that. Maybe stirring up some yeast or adding fresh S-05 would be my best bet for bottling?

Have you had this trouble before? Because I almost always use some sort of finings (Irish Moss) and have never had trouble with bottle conditioning after a secondary. I'm not experienced with gelatin, but I would imagine that there would still be plenty of yeast suspended to carb the bottle within 3 weeks. If you are that concerned, I don't see why adding some yeast before bottling would be a bad thing.

Yes, tough dilemma. Personally, I would want to get that beer in a bottle ASAP.

If you already have it in a keg and it is at a proper carbonation level, don't mess with a CPBF. Just get the beer and the bottles REALLY cold (i.e. right at the freezing point), and then jam a piece of tubing inside a cobra/picnic tap attached to your keg. Vent the CO2 out of your keg until you have JUST enough pressure to push out beer. Stick the tubing on the cobra tap right down to the bottom of the bottle, and quickly open the valve all the way. It shouldn't foam hardly at all. Fill the bottle until the foam is coming out the top and cap right away. The foam is all CO2 bubbles and should push out any oxygen. Done. I bottle all my beer for competition this way and have no problems.

See also Biermuncher's thread about the Biermuncher Bottle Filler which is essentially the same process.

From what I understand (and see in terms of clarity and speed of action), gelatin is much more potent then irish moss/whirlfloc.

FWIW, I have seen reports of successfully bottle primed beers that were fined with gelatin, but not with something this high gravity.

Unless someone else chimes in with advice, I will probably rack it to a keg and practice some bottle filling with a less valuable beer in another keg, using Biermuncher's method...