Filtration Station
 

I want to build a station for filtering. I would like to have the ability to filter a keg to take out of the house, so I can serve brilliantly clear beer anywhere and not worry about stirring up sediment when I move the keg. My thinking is that if I buy a filter, and try to make it work just sitting on the workbench it will be a total pain, much like integrating a march pump into your system without mounting it to anything.

This is what I am thinking about building:
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/6...ionstation.jpg

I would run a CO2 line off my kegerator to provide the gas. On the sanitation side, one corny will be filled with starsan and one with CO2. The other side will have two cornys, one containing the unfiltered beer and one the final target keg. First you will put gas on the starsan and pump sanitizer through the filter into the target keg. Empty the sanitizer from target keg. Hook lines up to CO2 keg and purge the filter, lines, and target keg with CO2. Move lines to unfiltered beer and proceed to filter beer into target keg.

Any thoughts? Is there a simpler solution? Worth the build (given that I DO want to filter)?

You know that if you want to move a keg, you can simply just build a jumper and transfer from one keg to the other, leaving the sediment behind...

I like the design. When I built my filter station, I was think the same thing. I needed a more "fixed" set up where I could do the transfer without joggling the kegs and the filter housing.

My little setup is simpler but does the job good.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/gallery/...er_Station.jpg

There are some awesome filtration stations in this forum. Check out previous postings.

Good luck and Cheers! :tank:

+1 I have a plate filter that I've used exactly one time. It's a major PIA and not worth the trouble IMO. I rack to a second keg after some cold conditioning.

OTOH, if you are convinced that you really want to filter your beer, the station you plan looks to be a sound design.

How do you like using the cartridge style filters? I am assuming that you clean them after each use? How difficult is it to clean and how many batches do you get out of one? I was thinking of going with the plate filter just for ease of single use filter pads, but doing so adds about 4 bucks to each batch...

The plate filters usually require more than one set of filter pads per batch as you will likely run the beer though a coarse set, then again through fine pads. The fine pads, when used alone, will usually plug up before you get even half way through filtering a keg. This was the PIA part that I mentioned previously. It got expensive buying the pads too.

My cartridge filter used disposable cartridges.

Which one are you using?

The cartridge filter should only be use once up to ~15gal. The media is disposable and can not be clean (or so they say...).

So far I love this type of filter. It is very easy to clean, sterilize and use. Just unscrew the housing, insert the clean filter media, reattach the housing and you are ready to filter beer!

I have done many batches and IMHO it works great. It helped to clear up my beers. One operational detail, I do a cold crash for a couple of days before filtering (~37F, better if you can take it to 34F). The cold crash causes the aggregation and precipitation of proteins (root cause of Haze).

For the record, many people in this forum use the plate filters and they seem happy with the performance. I can not comment on the plate filters because I do not have any experience using them.

Cheers!:mug:

I have the Midwest one: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/midwest-beer-clarity-filter-system.html

I only used it a couple of times. Mainly my issue was that it requires an additional event between making beer and drinking beer. Carving out time on a separate day to filter the beer isn't happening for me. With three little kids it's all about time efficiency for me.

But this thread has me thinking. If I cold crashed in the fermenter and had a filtration station set up, I could potentially filter on kegging day. That could work for me. It would be nice to not have to deal with kicked up sediment from moving around partially full kegs when I switch out an empty keg from the keg fridge.