Filtering beer from primary to secondary

Hey All,
I know the topic of filtering yeast has been discussed... mostly by BMC drinkers saying "ew, there's yeast in here."

By using a food-grade nylon screen (I'm not sure of the mesh size) at the end of my siphon tube in between primary/secondary/bottling, would I be filtering trub while letting the live yeast through? My beers never really clarify properly during bottle conditioning. I'd like to get them a little clearer without sacrificing quality.

So what do you think, will this hurt my beer or help it?

You can use the screen if you want. However, if you are having a hard time clarifying, that is the quick fix and not the answer. If you want to remove haze from your beer, you have to filter pretty fine, I think down to 1 or 5 microns...

Why don't you tell us your process first and we can try to tell you where to improve it so as to help your beer clarity.

Tell us about:

1. Your boil, what kettle, how long, extract, how you are adding it, anything else, how vigorous of a boil

2. Your cooling method, how long does it take

3. How much and what type of yeast are you pitching

4. what is your fermentation schedule, temps, length, measurements

5. anything else you can think of.

Cheers, and welcome to the board

You siphon to the secondary right?

Welcome to HBT!

I've never had more than just a light dusting of yeast on the bottom of bottles; sometimes less than commercial beers. I would also be curious about your process that causes your beer not to clear and sediment on the bottom.

I have 4 to 5 inches of ? at the bottom of my fermenter, some of it is a little grain that made it past my grain strainer, and then remained in the boil, then made it's way into the fermenter... I'm sure a lot of that is yeast as well, but how do I filter past this during transfer to my Secondary(carboy)?

This is why I don't see much use in a valve in the primary. Just get a autosiphon and start it high in the liquid, moving it slowly down as the volume drops until you are just above the trub. Then stop and accept your losses.

The result will be good, clean beer. If you bottle condition you are still going to get yeast in the bottle, there is simply no solution to that. Your other option is to keg, carb, then bottle from the keg with a bottling gun/counter pressure bottle filler. Then you can get yeast/trub free bottles.

But if you are kegging, the need for bottles is pretty low.

Leave your beer in primary longer. The level of trub in your picture isn't unusual for a beer that's been in the fermenter for about a week. If you leave it in your primary for another week or two the trub will compact down quite a lot and more yeast will fall out of your beer. Gravity works the same whether your beer is in primary or secondary. A low-flocculating yeast will take longer to drop out. You can help it a little with gelatin and cold crashing.

Thanks guys! So I'll let it sit for another week and pull out what I can, if I wind up w/4 gal, I'll need to prime with a full gallon to make up the 5 gal balance before I bottle? Or bottle what I have and prime with only a few cups?

MattsFlyShop said:

Thanks guys! So I'll let it sit for another week and pull out what I can, if I wind up w/4 gal, I'll need to prime with a full gallon to make up the 5 gal balance before I bottle? Or bottle what I have and prime with only a few cups?

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You might think about cold crashing. Make some room in the fridge and park your fermenter in there for a few days.

Also, be careful about your transfer from the kettle to the fermenter. 4" seems like a lot to me - is there a chance you had some trub migrate from the kettle? I usually see 1-2" of trub in the kettle and another 1-2" in the primary (all-grain, btw).

For bottling, I would not add water. Upping water by that much will mess things up. Find a priming calculator and add priming sugar to suit the wort volume, temp, and CO2 level.

Good luck!

FWIW I normally dump everything from the kettle into the fermenter. The trub doesn't hurt your beer, and some argue that the yeast utilize it as nutrients.

NRbrewguy said:

Hey All,
I know the topic of filtering yeast has been discussed... mostly by BMC drinkers saying "ew, there's yeast in here."

By using a food-grade nylon screen (I'm not sure of the mesh size) at the end of my siphon tube in between primary/secondary/bottling, would I be filtering trub while letting the live yeast through? My beers never really clarify properly during bottle conditioning. I'd like to get them a little clearer without sacrificing quality.

So what do you think, will this hurt my beer or help it?

Click to expand...

teach them how to pour a beer into a glass properly, and the problem will go away

Awesome. So I'm going to let it sit for a week or two and pull what I can from above the trub. I'm not worried about the yeast so much, just the grains and husks that I missed.

If you don't want trub in your secondary, why don't you just not put it in there? It isn't like it's mixed in with the beer.

Open spigot
Drain trub until beer comes out
Close spigot
Drain beer into secondary

If you put a screen at the end of your spigot with the intention of catching particles, it seems like the relatively small surface area would get clogged pretty quickly if it was doing it's job. Why not just put a mesh bag in your secondary, rack into secondary, remove mesh bag?

That's what I'll be doing, just bought a few 5 gal paint strainers from Home Depot, should these be sanitized or boiled?

Well, afer listening to many experienced brewers, I will not be filtering this Brown Ale, I'll syphon the beer off of the trub into a secondary after a week or so in my garage, calculate the priming sugar and bottle 4 gal. instead of 5...cut my losses. I learned the importance of patience and proper equipment. Grain and hop bags from now on.

DonMagee said:

This is why I don't see much use in a valve in the primary. Just get a autosiphon and start it high in the liquid, moving it slowly down as the volume drops until you are just above the trub. Then stop and accept your losses.

The result will be good, clean beer.

Click to expand...

This.

I use a valve in the primary and it works fine. Crash cool for a couple days to compact the cake, run off a pint or so of whatever got stuck in the valve, and I've got clear beer.

I transferred my Brown Ale to a Bright this weekend, i'll have about 3.5 Gal to bottle when all is said and done...not being patient and paying too little attention cost me a half of a batch of good beer. I brewed a Pale Ale yesterday with much better results as I used a Grain and Hop Bag (sterilized 5Gal paint Strainer) throughout the boil and removed it just before the cool... the transfer into my fermenter was effortless... I'm living proof that Cavemen Can Brew Beer

jerrodm said:

This.

Click to expand...

Yes, exactly that

people have made a lot of good suggestions here for clarifying your beer:
- cold crash for 48 hours (if you don't have a fridge, put your bucket in a larger bucket/tub and pack in some ice, forzen water bottles, etc)
- use a siphon (recommendation: an autosiphon) and pull beer from above the trub. stop siphoning as you get close to the trub. if you try to extract every last drop, you're going to get yeast.
- use finings (irish moss, whilrfloc, gelatin, etc)
-give the yeasties time to settle

MattsFlyShop said:

Well, afer listening to many experienced brewers, I will not be filtering this Brown Ale, I'll syphon the beer off of the trub into a secondary after a week or so in my garage, calculate the priming sugar and bottle 4 gal. instead of 5...cut my losses. I learned the importance of patience and proper equipment. Grain and hop bags from now on.

Click to expand...

are you actually going to give up a fill gallon of beer in order to avoid the trub?

no way i would ever do that. i would get every drop i could out of primary, and then worry about the trub in secondary later.

but there is no chance i would ever give up 20% of my beer

If you are doing pale and brown ales what in the world is the secondary for? Just leave everything in the primary for 3 weeks, siphon to bottling bucket AFTER priming sugar has been added to bucket. Let your beer sit at room temp (approx 70*) for 3 weeks and the trub in the bottles should settle into a fairly stable mass. Chill to drinking temps for 2 or 3 days then pour slowly and watch for the yeast on the bottom to begin to move toward your glass and then STOP pouring. Important thing is NOT move the bottles around a lot as this loosens up the yeast on the bottom. Transporting in a car in a cooler will do that.
Relax have a cold one.

dadshomebrewing said:

are you actually going to give up a fill gallon of beer in order to avoid the trub?

no way i would ever do that. i would get every drop i could out of primary, and then worry about the trub in secondary later.

but there is no chance i would ever give up 20% of my beer

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There's no reason you need to leave that much beer in the fermenter. In my experience you might need to leave 6 or 8 oz. in order to avoid sucking up a bunch of junk, but no more than that. Please, whatever you do, don't throw away a gallon of perfectly good beer just so the rest is a little clearer!

do a cold crash and there will be no need to leave more than half a bottle behind.

dadshomebrewing said:

are you actually going to give up a fill gallon of beer in order to avoid the trub?

no way i would ever do that. i would get every drop i could out of primary, and then worry about the trub in secondary later.

but there is no chance i would ever give up 20% of my beer

Click to expand...

I had 4" of grain in there that got past my strainer, I had considered re-straining it but didn't want to cause too much disturbance and risk oxidation, however that lesson is behind me and the mistakes in grain handling overcome. Truth be told I think more important lessons are about to show themselves as I believe that batch is infected due to the burnt rubber taste it had at bottling.

sweetcell said:

people have made a lot of good suggestions here for clarifying your beer:
- cold crash for 48 hours (if you don't have a fridge, put your bucket in a larger bucket/tub and pack in some ice, forzen water bottles, etc)
- use a siphon (recommendation: an autosiphon) and pull beer from above the trub. stop siphoning as you get close to the trub. if you try to extract every last drop, you're going to get yeast.
- use finings (irish moss, whilrfloc, gelatin, etc)
-give the yeasties time to settle

Click to expand...

I use Irish Moss in the boil in the last 15 minutes. Would you say to use it when transferring to the secondary?

therev71 said:

I use Irish Moss in the boil in the last 15 minutes. Would you say to use it when transferring to the secondary?

Click to expand...

No.

Irish moss is a "kettle fining"- it works from the action of the boil to coagulate proteins. It won't do anything at all if added when the wort isn't boiling. Adding it to beer won't do anything.

obey the yooper.

(did you see that whip?!?)

OP needs to do something to keep grain out of the fermenter. How is it getting in there?

Burnt rubber doesn't sound like anything I have heard of regarding infection. Did you burn the wort while boiling? Any scorched material on the bottom of the kettle? Flavor will often be dramatically different at bottling and when the bottles are fully conditioned.

I use a traditional 3 tier rig and get absolutely no grain into the boil let alone into the fermenter. I also use a 5 gallon paint strainer bag to contain my hops. The most I have ever left in the boil kettle was about 12 ounces. The thickest layer of trub at the end of fermentation was about 1/2 inch. It was not as deep as the cap on the end of my autosiphon so I have never had the need to filter. The largest amount of yeast cake/trub I ever had was less than 2 quarts.

Also, I rarely do a secondary. I don't cold crash and the worst I have is a little haze. Most of the time the beers are very clear. The only fining I use is Irish Moss.

kh54s10 said:

Burnt rubber doesn't sound like anything I have heard of regarding infection.

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sulphur (esp. diethyl sulfide and sulfur dioxide) can give the impression of burnt rubber. potential sources:

1) infection
2) too much sulfite (like metabisulfite, aka campden tablets)
3) yeast stress and/or autolysis
4) light-struck

http://www.carolinabrewmasters.com/PDF/Complete_Beer_Fault_Guide.pdf
http://www.belgiansmaak.com/off-flavours-in-beer-off-flavours/
https://www.cicerone.org/sites/default/files/resources/off_flavor.pdf

kh54s10 said:

OP needs to do something to keep grain out of the fermenter. How is it getting in there?

Click to expand...

good question. regardless of the type of mash tun used, one should never get grain in the boil kettle, or only trace amounts (i put my run-off through a 300 micron mesh filter and do get a few sand-sized pieces... amounting to maybe a quarter teaspoon for 14 gallons of runoff).

OP, are you vorlauffing (recirculating) before running off?

Wouldn't hold your breath on an answer, 8 yo thread and OP hasn't posted since then.