[dhouse]

Here is my idea. At bottling add sugar and Gelatin. Ferment in secondary at recommended temperature and time for carbonation and then cold crash the bottles for clarity. Anyone ever try this? What was the result?

Best,

[santoch]

I never tried it but my thought is they are counter productive.
You want the yeast to get into suspension so it eats the sugars and carbonates the beer.
But the gelatin is in there to electrostatically bind to the yeast and make them drop out of suspension.

You can get good clarity by simply giving them time to carbonate (I go at least 2 weeks at 70F+) then crash cooling them down.

[dhouse]

Thanks. It seems like gelatin is an option only if the beer is force carbonated.

[stpug]

Thanks. It seems like gelatin is an option only if the beer is force carbonated.

I would not agree with this.  You can use gelatin in the primary while it's cold crashing.  Then rack off the settlement carefully into your bottling bucket with priming sugar; and then bottle.  You will still get some yeast build-back-up in the bottles due to the priming but the amount is much less than had you not fined (typically).

However, I'm not opposed to your other idea of basically using gelatin in a warm environment and then initiating it's fining actions down the road after carbonation.  I feel like this should generally work, but perhaps it won't work as well.  I've never done this so I have not direct experience, but I think there's a possibility it could work.

[Joe Sr.]

I don't think you want the gelatin to carry over into your bottles.  The first time I used it, ages ago, I had that happen.  I did pretty much everything wrong with the gelatin and had glops of it in my bottles.  It was nasty.

I'd do what stpug says and fine it first, let it clear, and then bottle.  You need far less yeast to carbonate your bottles than you might think.  Plus, if your beer needs fining, you want to get that out before it hits the bottle or you could have a pretty nice size chunk of sediment in the bottles.