filters and centrifuges

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hopsalot

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It is unfortunate that American Craft Breweries are slowly moving towards centrifuges, the idea behind the Craft Brew movement in America was not to lasso in BMC drinkers with looks but taste and creativity. Vanity has no place here. IMO the filter is one thing but the centrifuge has no place in the Craft Brew Movement. I am no snob, a nerd I am, but no snob, but I genuinely feel that the focus on clarity of beer is hurting the general effort of Craft Beer.
 
I disagree. I don't think using a centrifuge takes anything away from the craft beer industry. If I had a centrifuge I'd probably use it. Craft beer is all about flavor and creativity IMO.
 
It is unfortunate that American Craft Breweries are slowly moving towards centrifuges, the idea behind the Craft Brew movement in America was not to lasso in BMC drinkers with looks but taste and creativity. Vanity has no place here. IMO the filter is one thing but the centrifuge has no place in the Craft Brew Movement. I am no snob, a nerd I am, but no snob, but I genuinely feel that the focus on clarity of beer is hurting the general effort of Craft Beer.

What's the logic here?

A. BMC is bad beer.
B. BMC uses centrifuges
C. Any brewery that uses centrifuges makes bad beer.

It could just as easily be:
A. BMC is bad beer.
C. BMC uses yeast.
C. Any brewery that uses yeast makes bad beer.
 
BMC is more of a broad term in this discussion. I personally don’t think a brewery needs to have crystal clear beer to sell their product. I do not think that the use of a centrifuge will produce bad beer; I do think it is unnecessary though. If you say that a centrifuge does not affect the flavor we can agree to disagree. I understand that clear beer is more approachable therefore it markets better. My wish is that an unfiltered beer would market just as well as a filtered or centrifuged beer.
 
What's the logic here?
C. Any brewery that uses yeast makes bad beer.

I am not sure how you came to that conclusion; my original statement was condoning suspended yeast. Additionally I do not know what filtering methods BMC employs. What I do know is that the application of centrifuging is growing in American Craft Breweries
 
I don't really see why either filtering or centrifuging in general are bad things. You are assuming that it somehow takes away from the quality of the finished beer in some way. The bottom line is that brewing on a commercial level is about consistency and profit. It takes a ton of time and space to let beer sit around and clarify on its own. And bottle conditioning beer takes additional time and space. Typically, filtering/centrifuging is done to either clarify beer and/or control yeast levels, thus saving time and cost and increasing consistency. I'd bet that there are beers you really like that are run through a centrifuge and you don't even know it. In fact, I even know one brewery in particular that makes really good beer that uses a centrifuge and then bottle conditions their beer afterwards.
 
I am not sure how you came to that conclusion; my original statement was condoning suspended yeast. Additionally I do not know what filtering methods BMC employs. What I do know is that the application of centrifuging is growing in American Craft Breweries

It's reductio ad absurdum....to show that because BMC does something, doesn't make it bad (which was implied by the sounds of your OP).
 
I agree with all of your posts, I know of many breweries that use a centrifuge and the beer is awesome. Maybe my original point was not portrayed clearly or I was too zealous. I wish clarity of beer was not so valued by the average consumer. I understand the economics behind a centrifuge. To some, a beer that is not clear is a beer that is not well made. That is all.

It's reductio ad absurdum.....

nice name drop partner
 
I love to cook. I have a lot of friends that love to eat what I cook. Constantly I hear things like "I can't stand thyme". I really don't like much garlic, I hate onions, etc. They love my food though, most of it tends to have thyme, garlic, and onions. They just don't know it. People are consumed with pre-conceived notions based on something or other. It is what it is. In European countries, beer has to a much larger degree been unfiltered, but they didn't have a prohibition that cleared out all the micro-breweries in the whole country. Then when you come back from prohibition, they market. Unless it's dark, people can see haziness, and when you grow up in a germaphobic world, where people freak out when Chicken isn't dried to a crisp when cooked, that's what you end up with. As a producer, you have to stay in business, if you can make your product more appealing to a market segment without affecting quality, you do it. Regardless of how much such things may be based on superstition. Lately when I have been selling hot sauce, I have realized, "yeah I think I have a great tasting gourmet product, however, in truth, when you are selling it, appearance, marketability is what drives the sale." You can have a crap product with good marketability, and like a placebo, people will convince themselves its good. You have a great product with great marketability, well that's just better.

Never heard a latin termed logical fallacy called a name-drop. heh.
 
hopsalot,

The thing you are missing here is that centrifuges are good for 2 things...yes they help clarify the beer, but they also allow brewers to get more beer out of every batch...this is a considerable amount. I have a good friend that is the head brewer at a lager regional brewery and he just got one and raves about the increase in sellable beer from every batch, nay a word about clarity.
 
that is a good point, more beer for all! but I still perfer unfiltered beer

CHEERS
 
What's the logic here?

A. BMC is bad beer.
B. BMC uses centrifuges
C. Any brewery that uses centrifuges makes bad beer.

It could just as easily be:
A. BMC is bad beer.
C. BMC uses yeast.
C. Any brewery that uses yeast makes bad beer.



Wood floats
if the witch floats, she's made of wood! :D
 
So is the argument unfiltered vs filtered? I'm not one to care very much about clarity, but there is something to say about a beautifully clear, clean beer. If it's cloudy I'll still drink the **** out of it. The truth is, I'd rather centrifuge over filtering any day. Plate filters introduce trace amounts of oxygen to a beer and they strip away a lot of the hop aroma. A centrifuge is a completely sealed vessel that allows brewers to remove large amounts of yeas, trub, and hops in suspension. It does not, however, make for a filtered beer. In fact, when using a centrifuge, there are still yeast cells left in suspension after the process, just that there aren't very many left. Centrifuge gives you the closest thing to an unfiltered beer (because technically it is) that you can find without clarifying at all.

The amount yielded is far greater with a centrifuge, too.

Look at it this way: A brewery makes an IPA, they put it in a brite tank, carb it up, bottle it, ship it out. It sits on a shelf un-refrigerated for a month. Notice there was no filtering or running through a centrifuge in this example. The yeast in suspension wake up again and slowly eat away at trace amounts of sugars still in the IPA. This can possibly result in an over carbonated bottle or possible bottle explosions. The way around that is to use really strong bottles and corks.

When using a filter there are tons of downsides. When using a centrifuge you can package and ship a stable product every time. Honestly, the centrifuge is less about clarity and more about yields and stable packaged product.
 
.

Look at it this way: A brewery makes an IPA, they put it in a brite tank, carb it up, bottle it, ship it out. It sits on a shelf un-refrigerated for a month. Notice there was no filtering or running through a centrifuge in this example. The yeast in suspension wake up again and slowly eat away at trace amounts of sugars still in the IPA. This can possibly result in an over carbonated bottle or possible bottle explosions. The way around that is to use really strong bottles and corks.

I think this is a a non-issue, regardless of if a centrifuge step is employed. Residual sugar that is able to be fermented and present after bottling would imply that the beer is under-fermented, otherwise that sugar would have been fermented in the first place.

Non-filtered beers are still stable in bottles at room temp if they have been fermented properly (as all homebrewers can attest to!).
 
There's one arguement I rarely hear being made, and I feel it's a rather important one.

Imagine you're the head brewer at a local craft brewery, and you're in a conversation with the head brewer from a BMC company. Could you honestly tell them to their face that they don't make good beer? Not questioning your manliness or anything. They produce a consistent product on a massive scale, and they sell a lot. A LOT.

The point is that it's hard to make the arguement to someone who sells more beer in a year than you could make in a decade. If I were the head brewer I would laugh in your face and say "My beer is bad? Oh? Tell that to the 18 million barrels of beer I sold last year. Let me know how that works out for you."

Is the beer any good? Well... After a long day of hard work, the first sip is refreshing. But that's about it. I'm just saying that you can't really think that your opinion of one step in a long brewing process outweighs science, professional opinion, millions of product sold, and craft brewerys attempt to make their beer more marketable. If anything, I promote the idea of craft beer being more marketable. Maybe it will force the people who make similar looking, worse tasting beer to step it up.
 
There's one arguement I rarely hear being made, and I feel it's a rather important one.

Imagine you're the head brewer at a local craft brewery, and you're in a conversation with the head brewer from a BMC company. Could you honestly tell them to their face that they don't make good beer? Not questioning your manliness or anything. They produce a consistent product on a massive scale, and they sell a lot. A LOT.

The point is that it's hard to make the arguement to someone who sells more beer in a year than you could make in a decade. If I were the head brewer I would laugh in your face and say "My beer is bad? Oh? Tell that to the 18 million barrels of beer I sold last year. Let me know how that works out for you."

Is the beer any good? Well... After a long day of hard work, the first sip is refreshing. But that's about it. I'm just saying that you can't really think that your opinion of one step in a long brewing process outweighs science, professional opinion, millions of product sold, and craft brewerys attempt to make their beer more marketable. If anything, I promote the idea of craft beer being more marketable. Maybe it will force the people who make similar looking, worse tasting beer to step it up.


Anyone who homebrews should appreciate the amount of work it takes for companies like BMC to make that consistent of a product. Then there is a snotty "BMC beers suck because they don't make an IPA" crowd, which I pretty much ignore.

I know all about the stuff that came out in "Beer Wars", but that is business. I have a hard time that Sam Adams wouldn't be trying to choke out breweries like Stone Brewing if they had the chance to do so (To take the analogy of big vs. little guy in the craft brew market).

That being said, BMC sells a metric f*ckton of beer, but their growth is flat. The craft-brew market grew something like 12% last year (in a bad economy to boot). That says something about how tastes are changing.
 
Anyone who homebrews should appreciate the amount of work it takes...BMC sells a metric f*ckton of beer, but their growth is flat. The craft-brew market grew something like 12% last year

+1 and Amen.

We need tastes to change, and I know people are moving appreciate local and "craft/artisan/home made..." products. CSA's are increasingly popular, and I've heard my LHBS is very busy.

I'll be interested to see whether or not this trend means that craft beer is going to steal the market, or the big guns learn to make their beers "craft style". Though it's easy to see which would be preferred.

:off: Last night I had a Guiness Black Lager. It said "Cold Brewed" on the label. Does that terminology bother anyone else?
 
hopsalot,

The thing you are missing here is that centrifuges are good for 2 things...yes they help clarify the beer, but they also allow brewers to get more beer out of every batch...this is a considerable amount. I have a good friend that is the head brewer at a lager regional brewery and he just got one and raves about the increase in sellable beer from every batch, nay a word about clarity.

+1 we recently had the night brewer from Summit Brewing at my homebrew club and he said they are getting ready to bring online their centrifuge. He was ecstatic at the amount of recovered beer they would be able to get and increased hop aroma that would not be stripped out by the filters. (they use DE filters which are even worse than pad filters so I hear) He said it would help the company by improving output and reducing the amount of hops needed for each batch. Sounds like a good business strategy and focus on quality to me. There is a place for purists (i.e. Cantillion, Boon, etc) but I enjoy having an afordable daily drinker as well!
 
Well, if you're looking for a centrifuge here's your big chance:

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/zip/3270144298.html

It's refrigerated, looks like it would hold about five gallons after you plugged all the holes in it.

There's somebody in Canada attempting to get about $1,000 for a similar one - my buddy was speculating about brewing at 5,000 RPM and what kind of effect that would have on the process - we decided not to find out ;-)
 
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