Gelatin fining primary in ice bucket

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Bill Tong

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I have done it and the beer is crystal clear, so I thought I'd share my steps.

I added no kettle finings nor did I vorlauf and noticed how hazy the beer was even at room temp when I tested SG. So i decided to experiment. I don't have a fermentation chamber so can't cold crash.

After my OG 1.06 APA was done fermenting, I prepared an ice bath with as many frozen water bottles as I could fit. I placed the primary in there for 24 hours, replacing the frozen bottles after 12 hours. My ambient temp is 20C (68F) and the beer in the fermenter fluctuated between 5C and 9C (41F - 48F) according to a stick on thermometer placed just below the beer line and above the water line. I know these aren't really that accurate but that's besides the point. I have a bucket fermenter and I did not even cover the top of the fermenter with wet cloth.

Morning of day 2 I swapped the ice bottles and waited an hour for it to chill. I then boiled some of my brew water in a kettle, sprinkled on 1 tsp gelatin and stirred until completely dissolved. I had to keep adding some hot water from the kettle to get it to dissolve completely. Then I let this solution cool to room temp in the sink in some water.

I then poured the solution in a spiral motion into my fermenter and briefly and gently stirred just the top layer with a sanitized spoon and closed up the fermenter again. I moved the whole ice bucket with the fermenter to the spot from which I was going to transfer to my bottling bucket and let it sit for 5 days, swapping the ice bottles every 12 hours.

On bottling day, after swapping the ice bottles and waiting an hour or so, I first siphoned out the water out of the ice bucket and then transferred the beer to my bottling bucket and bottled like normal.

After 2 weeks bottle conditioning and 1 week in the fridge, the beer is crystal clear, no chill haze either. I used S-05 and have always struggled to get this yeast to flocculate, but this did the trick. A bit of effort but so totally worth it. The most difficult part for me was to wait for it to condition before I could drink it.
 
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