Beer Filtering by Gravity

Hi

I am considering filtering my home brew beer from a plastic barrel. Is it worth doing? Is there a cheap way of going about it? I would really appreciate any tips. Cheers. Brett
Cheers

I think the only way that you could filter without using a pressurized system with kegs would not work unless we are talking about a small little mesh filter or cheesecloth. That would probably work if you started a siphon with it but it could clog up very fast depending on how much trub you suck up in this process. I personally use two kegs and I autosiphon into one and the push the beer through a 1 micron house filter. before I chill and carbonate the beer. The problem with fine filters is that if you are bottle conditioning then this will remove yeast and make it nearly impossible/ totally impossible to bottle carb.
Is it worth doing? To me yes I enjoy the clarity and not worrying about any residual yeast the settles in the bottom of my keg.
Cheap way to do it? Get a big funnel and a wire filter or cheesecloth to run the beer through but this would cause oxidation which you don't want.

TLDR- Bottle conditioning don't filter, if you already fermented your beer don't filter because of oxidation.

Low buck way would be to pass it through a hop bag or as mentioned fine cheese cloth.

Thanks guys. I'll try the cheese cloth over the tap opening as I bottle. Appreciate the heads up.

Would that cause oxidation?

Yes this would cause oxidation and I do not recommend doing this! Putting the beer through a cheesecloth will aerate the beer as you put it into the bottles. This is why bottle fillers fill from the bottom and attempt to have as little contact with air as possible.

So it is better not to filter then? Is oxidation bad? For what reason?

biohaz7331 said:

Yes this would cause oxidation and I do not recommend doing this! Putting the beer through a cheesecloth will aerate the beer as you put it into the bottles. This is why bottle fillers fill from the bottom and attempt to have as little contact with air as possible.

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True, I guess I should have explained more thoroughly my idea of low buck filtering.

Place filtration media all the way to the floor of receptacle, pour into filtration media, slowly remove filtration media so as not to cause aeration.

To xfer the liquid use a siphon placed on bottom within the filtration media.

I would personally just let it sit in the fridge for a couple days until it was cleared out then siphon carefully so as not to disturb the sediment. Most beers self filter in this manner.

brett_1978 said:

So it is better not to filter then? Is oxidation bad? For what reason?

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Tastes like plastic or wet cardboard pooping.

When you filter you need to purge the lines and filter with Co2. Otherwise, you will oxidize your beer and ruin it. I've done it and it does tast like wet carboard. It also darkens your beer. Even if you could pull of the gravity filter, the beer would be ruined from prolonged exposure to oxygen.

Maybe you should look into using finings.