Stuck clearing?

[Dloucks]

I've never had this happen before, thought I'd throw it out here for the group.

Three weeks ago I brewed an amarillo APA. i don't normally cold crash my beers, though I occassionally use gelatin finings to clear them a little before I keg. Also my beers are typically pretty cloudy for the first 1/3 of the keg.

With that said, my garage has been pretty steady in the low 40's for the last several weeks, so I decided I would chill this beer out there until it was time to keg. Well after 4 days the carboy still looked pretty murky, so I went ahead and added 3/4 teaspoon of gelatin and swirled.

Now on to the weird part. After the 1st night the top 1/3 of the carboy appeared to be pretty clear, but was still "Muddy" below that, two days later there doesn't seem to be any change.

So the question:

1. Did I not use enough gelatin, especially considering I just "swirled" the carboy rather than racking on top of the jello?
2. Does the cold beer slow down the effects of the gelatin? (figured it would be the other way around)
3. My beer is retarded.

 

[discgolfin]

Only Time will tell...Give it time

J

 

[waldoar15]

Mine usually clears all the way around the three day mark. But it just really depends.

 

[Dloucks]

Got home from work again tonight, and again it looks like the top 1/3 is clear, and cloudy the rest of the way down. Strange how there is a very clear delineation between the clear and cloudy.

If it's still sitting as it this weekend, I'll rack to secondary on top of another 3/4 teaspn of gelatin finings.

 

[BigJay13]

Are you heating the gelatin to ~180* F and letting it cool before adding it to the beer? I believe you need to do this in order for the gelatin to work--at least that's what I have done and had 100% clearing within 48 hours. This thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/gelatin-no-joke-153093/ has a lot of useful tips for using gelatin.

 

[Dloucks]

Yeah. I've used the gelatin before and it is an amazing product. I did heat to 180 and allow to cool to 80 before mixing.

Tonight the beer still appears clear for the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the carboy, but not all the way through, and it doesn't appear to be getting any better.

The only thing I can think is that I either didn't add enough of the gelatin, or didn't mix it well enough (I'm certain of this.). Now it's just a matter of would I rather wait for it to clear the rest of the way on its own, or rack it onto another batch of gelatin.