How to carbon filter

Can anyone tell me how to make a easy to use carbon filter or where to go to buy one? I have been making simple mead for about 6 months now. I have bought active carbon, the way i've been using it was in a pvc tube with a coffie filter at the end to keep it all in there. but when i go to strain my mead through the filter it comes out a greyish black color. Can anyone tell me what im doing wrong on filtering it and what I need to do to have my mead come out clear\. my e-mail is [email protected]

Thank you

It's greyish black because the activated carbon is graded, which means it's made of particles of many sizes, not all of which are big enough to be captured by the coffee filter. What you have is very fine carbon particles coloring your mead black. Try letting it settle out.

Why are you trying to carbon filter your mead, anyway?

try cleaning your carbon by running water through it (its always one of the first steps recommended in carbon based water filters)

+1 with huesmann's comment/question.

Carbon filtration will strip out a lot of the flavour and aroma.

You don't normally carbon filter meads, wines etc etc.

Sure, if you've got it cleared already, whether it's with finings or naturally (clear is defined as being able to read a newspaper through it), then standard plate/pad filtration might be applied to give it a final polish, but then only down to about 1 micron, otherwise you stand to remove colour/flavour/aroma if you went down to "sterile" or something like 0.25 microns......

regards

fatbloke

LOL, maybe you want to centrifuge your mead or something!