did I add my gelatin correctly?

background; I've been brewing on and off for about 8 years. I never tried to do anything in the way of fining before because I personally don't care about the clarity of my beer.

However, I decided to try and experiment with my latest batch of brown ale and use gelatin for fining. I made this decision about 1.5 weeks after racking the beer to the secondary fermentor (a 5 gallon carboy).

I plan to bottle this over the weekend, so I added the gelatin last night (to give it a few days to settle before bottling.)

I prepared the gelatin following directions I came across in a variety of sources;
- put 1 pkg of knox gelatin into 1 cup boiling hot water and stir to dissolve.
- add this 1 cup of mixture to another 1 cup of iced water, stir some more

Since I did not have the luxury of racking the beer INTO the gelatin mixture, I opted for slow pouring of the gelatin mix into the beer through a funnel, hose, and racking cane.

I kept the tip of the racking cane below the surface of the beer as I poured in the gelatin and and rotated the cane to try and get an even mixing. Once the gelatin was all in, I used the cane to gently stir everything up. I then re-sealed the carboy and went to bed.

This morning (10 hours after adding the gelatin), I checked on the beer, expecting to see the beginnings of the fruits of my labor; clear beer at the top of the carboy.

However, what I saw was beer that looked exactly the same as it did BEFORE I added the gelatin. No visible difference at all, except for some gummy residue at the bottom of the carboy.

I'm not concerned about the beer. I know it will taste fine, I'm just disappointed with the (lack of) fining thus far.

QUESTIONS

(1) did I not mix the gelatin in well enough?

(2) how long should it take before I start to notice the clarifying? AM I just being too impatient?

-walker

Been there, done that. Thought it was a waste of my time and will never do it again!!



1) sounds like you did a great job there

2) you might see a difference by the weekend, but not a great deal. (see above)

cheers, loop

I tried it once some years back. As I recall, I added it at bottling time. Dissolved in boiling water and pitched with priming sugar. The brew came out sparkling after conditioning. Might be something of value if you are trying to obtain clear beer in a hurry.