Gelatin floaters

[Rappatuz]

I was recently advised to try out gelatin for removing bitter tannins from a wild strawberry wine. It also needed clearing, so I went ahead. Only a third of the gelatin in the sachet would be used for this purpose, so I decided to try it out on my forest berry wine (wild varieties of blueberries, raspberries, strawberries) as well.

After about 24 hours, the strawberry wine had cleared out beautifully, with a sediment layer on the bottom of the container. However, remaining was also a thin layer of gelatin floating on top. Not a lot, but nothing you'd want in your bottles.

Will it fall to the bottom, eventually? If not, how can I remove it? It looked kind of clumpy, so I tried filtering it out through a fine meshed tea strainer. That was a waste of time.

Another concern is the sediment layer, which seems to be very light and therefore easily gets "airborne". Makes me think racking may become a bit of a challenge. Especially with the dark forest berry wine, which can't be monitored the way a transparent wine can be.

 

[Rappatuz]

I'll describe the solution I found for anyone who may be struggling with gelatin floaters.

A day after I added gelatin, 99% of the sediment had settled on the bottom of the carboy. My theory was that the wine still contained a small amount of CO2 and that these molecules bonded to gelatin, keeping it afloat. My strategy was to suck the floaters into the body of the juice and shake out the CO2. I held up the carboy and moved it in a circular motion making the liquid inside spin. This created a (weak) vortex which sucked in the floating gelatin. A small amount resurfaced, so I repeated the process. In total, the carboy was "swirled" three times. This method cleared the surface.

If your carboy is heavy, holding and "swirling" the carboy may not be such a good idea (for obvious reasons). Using a degassing whip or something to push/swirl the gelatin into the liquid will probably work just as well.

Good luck!