when and how to use gelatin?

http://www.bertusbrewery.com/2012/06/how-to-clear-your-beer-with-gelatin.html

This blog post covers all your questions I believe. Great blog if you haven't stumbled upon it yet.

 

kettle finings vs. fermenter finings. Many folks will do both, a lot of times I will do a kettle fining and leave fermenter fining for beers I plan to dry hop or if i'm using a yeast I know is a shitty floccer like Danish Lager yeast.

 

adding a half pouch of knox clear gelatin to your beer will produce very bright beer. I don't use kettle finings anymore, and I am not certain irish moss ever really worked anyway.

boil a few ounces of water. boiling helps if you obsess over contamination. but 170+ works too.
add 1/2 pouch unflavored gelatin. you can use the whole bag but it just makes more goo to clean out of the vessel later.
rack on top of the gelatin. or pour the gelatin over the beer. either way.
cold condition for a few days or longer.
you will have a jello paste at the bottom of your vessel after the beer has been finished. hot water will melt this goo.

that will clear up any beer. some people complain of hop aroma being stripped because gelatin is too good, but I am not one of those people.
Cheers.

 

Done correctly (I don't obsess over any of the steps, so it must be easy to do it correctly), the beer is almost scary clear after two days.

What were your plans for serving if you can't chill your beer?

 

if you can't chill your beer, you can save yourself the work. gelatin isn't going to work if you can't cold crash. real cold crash too.
start trolling CL for a cheap fridge. you know you need one.
Cheers.

 

It seems to take about 1 week for gelatin to work for me, so YMMV.

 

A recent article in BYO by Terry Foster recommended adding 1 tsp gelatin / 5G to the bottling bucket.

Sprinkle the gelatin atop 1/2 cup of cold water.
Stir to mix.
Nuke 20-30 seconds (do not let it boil)
Cool and pitch.

 

Do you usually do the fermenter fining before or after dry hopping?

 

Most will do it after. Dry hopping will toss the haze right back into the beer. Some want brilliant beer, and it should be the last step before serving.

 

Sorry. I wasn't thinking of bottling. I add the gelatin to the keg in the chiller. In two days, it's clear as crystal, the initial pint or so of goop notwithstanding.
You'll need to let the gelatin do its thing before you bottle. You don't want the easily disturbed sludge in the bottle. I'm assuming you could cold crash the secondary, but I've never bottled, so I won't try to give you advice on this.

 

I've always heard that its best to have the beer very cold before adding gelatin. I keep my carboy in a chest freezer and control the temp to 33F with my Johnson controller. After adding the gelatin I let it sit at cold temps for about a week prior to bottling.
I suppose you could try the ice-bucket method for cold crashing in general but it seems like a ton of work. I would just skip the cold crash/gelatin until you've got a chest freezer, just my opinion.

 

I'm not one to care much about the appearance of my ipa...if I'm going to add fermenter fining (I use polyclar) I always do it before dry hopping starts, since all I'm trying to do is get as much yeast out of suspension as possible because i don't want the yeast to strip the hop oils out of suspension.

 

Yeah, if you cant cool it down, then you'll need to live with the haze, or work on clearing it via time.

 

About 2 yrs ago I got a 7 cu ft chest freezer on Craigslist for $120 in good condition + $75 for External thermostat regulator. $200 total for fermentation chamber/cold conditioning chamber. Just have to keep really good sanitation practices to keep mold from forming from cold to cool fluctuations.