Beer Forum

I want to clarify a keg a bit before carbonating. It has a nylon bag with hops in it, dry hopping for a few days. When I add gelatin should I leave it room temp for a couple days, or put it in the fridge and start carbonating it right away?

Gelatin works best when the beer is cold. I also believe that carbonation can impede clarification (can't site a source). I typically rack to a keg, add gelatin and let it sit in the fridge for a few days before applying CO2. I have applied gas right away and didn't seem to notice much of a difference.

There might not be any science to this, but after I add gelatin to my keg, I push co2 through the beer-out tube to create nucleation sites for the yeast and gelatin to hook up.

I add my prepared gelatin mix to a sanitized & purged keg, seal it & fill through the liquid dip tube. I have a ball valve on the gas post to control the fill speed. When the beer hits the gas side, I stop filling, sanitize the posts add gas & pour off 200mL. It then gets put in the kegerator under pressure to slow carb at cold temp. I usually check the carb level on day 3 or 4 & the gelatin has already done it's thing. Most of it pours off in the first test pour or two & the rest comes out with that foamy last pint. Couldn't be easier.

What Ozwald said. With one caveat: once you add the gelatin and it does its thing, don't jostle it around. I have gotten in the habit of racking to another sanitized/purged keg once I've reached bright clarity. Then you're really good to go...

I don't even worry about agitating the set gelatin anymore. The stuff that doesn't come off in the 1st pull floats to the top of the keg & comes out a 1/2 second before the keg blows foam in my experience.

You only need to rack to a new keg if you plan on moving it, like ozwald said, it will be clear to the last pint. It doesnt float to the top though, all the yeast sits on the bottom and when that last pint runs to the diptube it will bring yeast and gelatin with it.

How long does it take for all your geletin to drop out. I kegged some scottish 60 on geletin following the directions on another thread of the forum. It has been a week since I kegged and gave it a taste, after pouring off some really cloudy crap. The beer has alot of off flavor yeast funk to it, should I give it a little more time? The beer tasted great before I kegged it, so I guess a could have messed up while cleaning left some junk in there....

If the taste doesnt change then this might be a dumper.