yeast rafts and gelatine goo

[finnfb]

Im brewing a all grain double citra IPA but after 3 weeks the yeast wasn't falling out and was suspended throughout my FV and floating in large clumps on surface. pic - http://imgur.com/Qi9Cudn
Im very close to my FG and fermenting stopped around a week ago. Im unable to cold crash as I live in a flat and don't have a large fridge, so to try and clear this up I added gelatine. I followed some online instruction making sure not to get to hot etc and I added this to my primary. After 48 hours all that's happened is I have a very large jelly crust with my floating yeast stuck in it. pic - http://imgur.com/Sn8Shpm

Is this now a write off? I was planning on moving to a bottling bucket try and swamp cool it and then bottle.

 

[finnfb]

.

 

[Jhu1321]

Rack and bottle.

 

[safcraft]

Did you mixed the gelatin well?
It looks like you added to the bucket, it stayed on top...
Maybe you used too much and made beer jelley!!

 

[slym2none]

When using gelatin, it is my understanding that you need to have the beer cold first, then keep it cold for 3-4 days after pouring in the gelatin.

If you can't cold-crash, that very well might be why this happened. But IDK for sure.

 

[jdauria]

When using gelatin, you really need the beer to be cold for it to work. And before heating the gelatin, you want to give it a few minutes to bloom in cool water. Just had this issue myself a few weeks ago, read online gelatin instructions and it did not mention to bloom first, and the gelatin just hung in suspension in the carboy for days. Then tried again blooming it first, and it cleared in 12 hrs. As you can see in pics, unbloomed gelatin cleared the top of the beer and then just clouded up the rest of it. But once I added bloomed yeast, crystal clear!

 

[daksin]

Yeah, if you can't chill the whole thing, gelatin isn't that useful. I'd try and rack from under it- if you get some into your bottles it's not the end of the world- it'll just drop out in the bottles instead of your fermenter.

 

[finnfb]

Thanks for all the responses. I was aware that using gelatin without cooling gives marginal benefits but as there was so much suspended particles I wasnt sure what my alternatives were. I managed to scoop out the jelly which did take the majority of the yeast rafts with it. I racked through a fine filter but ended up losing a gallon and half to trub.

I added the gelatin once fully dissolved in a solution so the blooming issue might be what caused it. Something to remember for next time.