Gelatine for fining - a few questions

[Karaya]

Hello everybody,

I've recently fined my 2nd ever mead batch (a vanilla beans + chai tea mead) using gelatine as kieselsol did not have any effect. It worked quite well but after 3 days now the gelatine has precipitated as a very fine milky white-ish phase on the bottom of the demijohn taking up about 1/4th of the total volume and is very easy to disturb. On the gelatine (liquid) bottle it says to rack off after 2 days but I do not want to loose that much liquid. Is it ok to wait some more time for the gelatine to compress more?

And another question regarding gelatine for fining: I just ran out of the liquid gelatine and I dont plan to order new equipment any time soon. Is it ok to use ordinary house hold gelatine as a substitute or does it have to be "brewer's grade" so to say..

Thank you

 

[saramc]

I have used plain household gelatin to fine a wine. This is what I did:
Use 1 tsp. of gelatin finings per 5 gallons of wine. Bring 2 ounces of water to a boil for 2-3 minutes. Allow to cool until it reaches 170-190F & then stir in 1 teaspoon unflavored grocery store gelatin powder. Stir until dissolved, allow to cool to body temp and then stir into your wine.Then proceed to store wine at temp of 35-55F until you rack your wine 2-3 weeks later.

As far as salvaging liquid, you will want to decant the lower portion of gelatined must into jars/bottles/jugs, etc... keep them cold and pour off the wine from the top as things settle. Working with chilled contents is key.

 

[Karaya]

Thank you for the quick reply!

I am currently keeping the demijohn in a large bucket filled with cold water and ice cubes, hope that helps the gelatine to settle down some more! It's quite hot now here (30-35°C) so that might also be a reason why it doesnt settle down quickly..

 

[Thundernick]

Not to hijack your thread, but while you guys are on the topic, how does gelatin work?

Is it not water soluble and it's more dense than water so it just sinks to the bottom and pulls debris down with it?

 

[RachmaelBenApplebaum]

Gelatine is positively charged and thus binds with negatively charged particles and it mingles in the hazy wine/beer etc and then falls out of suspension. Think using a magnet to play with iron filings in a jar of water.

 

[Karaya]

You can read up on different fining agents here:

http://www.brsquared.org/wine/Articles/fining.htm

 

[Karaya]

Btw does anybody have any experience as to how long one can leave the mead standing with gelatine added to it? In the link that I just posted it says

Coagulum is dense and forms relatively quickly (2-3 weeks)

so is it really ok to leave it standing for weeks?

 

[RachmaelBenApplebaum]

Btw does anybody have any experience as to how long one can leave the mead standing with gelatine added to it? In the link that I just posted it says



so is it really ok to leave it standing for weeks?

Yes