Gelatin and bottling?

Saw this in the Beer Smith news letter on beer clarity...

". One easily obtained ingredient is clear, plain gelatin from the grocery store. Dissolve it in a few cups of warm sterile water and add it to your secondary fermenter a few days before bottling. "

I thought this wasn't a good idea for bottlers because it will affect your carbing by stripping out yeast.

Anyone do this?

It does indeed strip out plenty of yeast, but it leaves enough to multiply and carb up your bottles. Short of filtering it is hard to take all the yeast out of suspension. What it does do is generally leave you with a much better cake at the bottom of the fermenter that is harder to accidentally disturb and much clearer beer. My beers did seem to start taking a little longer to carb up once I started using gelatin.

Hi. This might be a dumb question, but here goes anyway. We are told to make sure there is very little contact between your beer and oxygen after the yeast pitch phase. Once you have racked to a secondary fermenter, and taken care to do so without bubbles or aeration at all, how do you introduce your fining agent? Something like isinglass finings, or gelatin solution is slimy stuff. Do you stir it in, or drizzle it on top of your beer, or just pour it straight in and leave it?

The amount of water being used would be in the neighborhood of a cup or so ... Just enough to dissolve the gelatin. O2 pick up should be minimized as much as possible as a matter
Of good brewing practice but has a more signifigant impact on flavor with heat ( as in pasteurized beer) and long storage times. Neither of which are common in home brewing.
To answer your question, it is important to minimize O2 pick up but the impact in home brew is low enough to be almost unnoticeable in the end product. Additionally, the small amount of yeast activity in carbonating in the bottle will metabolize some of the o2.
Pour it in and let it work.

So simply pour a cup into the top of the secondary fermenter, don't stir it or anything and it will just clean the beer? My point is that if I pour it straight into the top of the fermenter (right in the centre) how will the fining solution mix with the contents of the fermenter to ensure it clears the whole fermenter (ie doesn't just sink in a straight line) ?

The gelatin is in suspension, it's not like dropping chunks of Jell-o into the secondary. The water flows into the beer carrying the suspended gelatin with it, it diffused into the beer and the gelatin drops out of suspension as it picks up the particulate solids in suspension in the beer. Try it for yourself, just heat water, stir in the gelatin (do not boil gelatin), allow to cool, then gently pour into the secondary and allow to sit for a week. It's a very common method around here with very few mishaps.

Great. Will try that out. How much gelatin and how much water would you add to a secondary fermenter carrying 5 gallons of beer?

One packet of unflavored gelatin dissolved in a cup or cup and a half of water is plenty, there are a few tutorials floating around the forums.

I'm going by memory but this info comes from "New Lager Brewing" by Greg Noonan.

He says to mix 1 gram of unflavored gelatin with 2 ounces of cold water for every gallon of beer that you are fining. So for a 5 gallon batch mix 5 grams of gelatin in 10 ounces of cold water. Let the mixture hydrate for an hour. Next, heat the mixture up to 150 -160 degrees to dissolve the gelatin. Do not let the mixture cool below 120 degrees before adding to your beer. Gently stir the beer to mix in the gelatin solution for 2 to 3 minutes. He says that the beer will clear in about 14 days at 50 degrees.

That is most instructive and helpful. All sorted for fining now I think !

I think we need to understand that gelatin should be DISOLVED... that is to say be IN solution. In suspension is a different animal. For example stomp in a puddle of water... the cloud of brown mud you create is earth in SUSPENSION. It will, in time settle out and the puddle appear "clear" again. Now, take that same puddle and pour in the water that you mixed (disolved) your priming sugar into. The sugar is not going to settle out it will stay disovled. (At least until the sun beats down on the puddle and evaporates the water to the point that the sugar solution becomes "super saturated". At some time after that point the sugar will begin to precipitate out of solution, and may cling to suspended particulates in the water. Have you ever made rock candy by hanging a string in sugar water.

OK now let's get back to the gelatin. You have put it into SOLUTION in the warm water... the you add it to your product... then a few things happen. What you desire to happen is that the gelatin will "plate out" or cling to particuplate matter in suspension. There is an electro-chemical thing happening there that we'll just call "magic". The gel precipitates out of solution, clinging to the particulate matter because of the pos neg electrical magic. The Particles are way heavy now and fall to the bottom of your vessle.

It's magic, it works. Don't argue with what is natural... nurture it.

How does it effect bottled beer from carbing? Any bottlers do this?

Brewskii said:

How does it effect bottled beer from carbing? Any bottlers do this?

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Yep. Used gellatin (sp.?) and my bottled beer carbed just fine in 2-4 weeks as usual and crystal clear.

Xcorpia said:

Yep. Used gellatin (sp.?) and my bottled beer carbed just fine in 2-4 weeks as usual and crystal clear.

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Cool... Definitely going to try this with my ipa in the works. I have been cauitious with clarifying because I don't want to end up with a batch that's flat and sweet after a month of waiting for it to carb. I'd rather drink it cloudy.

-Don't use a full packet, it's way more than you need. 1/2 packet is plenty(and probably still more than needed
-Add 1/2 pack to about 2/3-3/4cup of cool/cold water. Stir, then heat to 150F (i do this in the microwave in a pyrex measuring glass. Add mixture to beer (preferably cold beer). Wait 24-48 hours.
-It doesn't adversely affect bottling. Yes gelatin strips out most of the yeast, but it still leaves plenty to bottle condition the beer.

I have a sort of gut feeling that my beers in which I have used gelatin take slightly longer to carb up, but not much. I have no empirical proof of that.

BrewerDon said:

I Let the mixture hydrate for an hour. Next, heat the mixture up to 150 -160 degrees to dissolve the gelatin.

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Those instructions sound pretty good to me, although I think let the mixture hydrate for an hour is overkill, 10 minutes in 100º or so water works okay for me. Then heat the mixture to 180-190º, but as you say, don't let it boil. I think my times and temps are from Palmer.

If one is not racking into the secondary and trying to do it all in the primary, is it ok to add the gelatin solution into the primary, wait several days then bottle?

Yes, that's what some of us do.