Filtering for Dummies (well, maybe just for me...)

Okay, first a little story. My bride and I traveled to St Augustine, FL, for a little get-away and had lunch at the A1A Ale Works. I enjoyed a Bridge of Lions Brown Ale, and my wife had the Red Brick Ale - both were excellent. Their website listed a general description of the malts and hops used, and I got to thinking maybe I could get the recipe and give them a try at home - of course, their set-up was so much farther advanced than my little 5g fermenting bucket, it's embarrassing to think I could duplicate their brew. The biggest difference I noticed between their ale and my home brew is that theirs was completely devoid of any weird, yeasty taste, and, well, mine isn't. So that got me to thinking about the whole idea of filtering.

Hence my post. What is the best way for a small-time extract brewer like me to filter out the yeast from the beer before bottling? I did some reading on this website and learned a little about 0.5 micron pads and pressurized filtering, but that's the PhD level - I'm still in elementary school. I saw some mention of cold-crashing, but I already do that before adding the yeast to the wort - so I assume this is cooling the beer down before bottling. If someone would point me to a how-to on getting really clear beer from the primary-only, extract brewing process, I'd be really grateful.

Thanks in advance!

if you're bottle conditioning, you're gonna have yeast in the bottom of the bottle after they consume the bottling sugar.

I'd guess if you filter out all the yeast, there would be nothing to consume the bottling sugar and carbonate your bottled beer.

FWIW, the first homebrew I gave my dad, he drank it straight out the bottle. I asked him how it was, and he said it tasted very yeasty.

Hopefully I'm Not making any assumptions here, but I had to tell him that pouring homebrew into a glass, and leaving the last 1/4" in the bottle was a necessity. (and it removed the yeasty taste)

I've drank Sierra Nevada pale ale straight outta the bottle, and didn't notice any yeasty flavors, but I'd be scared to do the same with my homebrew.

EDIT: Also, sorry for not actually answering your question, but I've never noticed a yeasty taste in my first couple brews, so I was just thinking filtering is unnecessary.

Cold crashing is different than lowering your wort to yeast pitching temp.
It's chilling to get extra yeast and stuffs to fall out of suspension.

Also, as mentioned, if you filter all the yeast out prior to bottling, you will have nothing to carbonate your brew.

Cold crashing is droping the temps to 35-40 in order to get the yeast to drop out of suspension if left for a week or so you will have cleared beer, siphon from above the yeast cake in your primary if you want to avoid even more yeast but in my experience when i got real anal about "clearing my beer" my bottles took forever to carb because of the small amount of yeast in each bottle

I would do as above suggested. dont go crazy avoiding siphoning the yeast but when drinking your homebrew....pour it in a pint and avoid the last 1/4 inch of "lees" or yeast at the bottom.

The easiest step towards clear beer is bottling from a keg. Cold crash the keg (to 35 degrees or so) and most of the yeast will flocculate out, along with a lot of the proteins. Meanwhile pressurize the keg so the beer is carbed without adding priming sugar and more yeast.
Now, if you want bottled beer, use a counter-pressure filler, or a blichman beer gun to put the cold, clear, carbed beer in bottles and cap them. No sediment, no need to filter, little or no chillhaze.

OP, are you making starters? A highly yeasty flavor could indicate that you're underpitching.

I get very clear beer, little to no yeasties in the bottom of the bottles. I use a secondary first, then cold crash prior to bottling. End product is a nice clear beer. Carbs just fine, maybe a day or two longer, but not a problem carbing up.

Another way, and this is the most difficult, is to leave it alone for six months or so. And if you have fridge space store it cold (after bottle conditioning). I have never filtered, but I do keep a rather large pipeline, with some beers stored for many months before I break into them. My Kolsch and Blond Ales are as clear as any commercial product. Proper pouring procedures will eliminate the bottle dregs.

Try cold crashing your primary fermenter for 48 hours, then siphon into a secondary with some gelatin finnings for another 48 hours (heat them in water, but dont boil them!). Also, try using a teaspoon of irish moss or a whirlflock tablet 10 minutes left in your boil. That should eliminate several unwanted sidiment in your beer without getting into the complicated and unnecessary process of filtering. Cheers!

Cromwell said:

Now, if you want bottled beer, use a counter-pressure filler, or a blichman beer gun to put the cold, clear, carbed beer in bottles and cap them.

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Cromwell, please remember... Elementary school. What is a "counter-pressure filler" and a "blichman beer gun"? I could Google, but since you were kind enough to suggest them...

thasnazzle said:

OP, are you making starters? A highly yeasty flavor could indicate that you're underpitching.

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Nope, no starters - I simply smack the yeast pack, let it sit for a few hours while I'm cooking the wort, and pour in the liquid after I've cooled it enough to pitch... What does "underpitching" mean?

chessking said:

Proper pouring procedures will eliminate the bottle dregs.

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My main refrigerator - the one in my kitchen - has storage for soda or beer cans or bottles in the door, and they're at a 45 degree angle or so. I've noticed that when I pour out of bottles that have been sitting flat in my garage fridge, the yeast at the bottom tends to mix with the liquid as the surface of the beer drops - no matter how slowly or carefully I pour. When I pour out of bottles that have been sitting at a 45 degree angle, however, I can keep the yeast in the bottom better because it's all collected in a "corner" at the bottom and the surface of the beer doesn't touch it until the very end of the pour. Makes me think I need to build something for my garage fridge that will store bottles at an angle...

I can't imagine how I could be screwing this up, but I'll ask... What exactly are "proper pouring procedures"?

CrossBones said:

Nope, no starters - I simply smack the yeast pack, let it sit for a few hours while I'm cooking the wort, and pour in the liquid after I've cooled it enough to pitch... What does "underpitching" mean?

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"Underpitching" is the term used to describe pouring less than the ideal number of yeast cells into your wort. A single yeast smack pack does not contain the ideal number of yeast for a regular 5-gallon batch of beer. Many people on this site make starters so that we have more yeast. Another option is to buy several packages of yeast for each batch of beer.

CrossBones said:

I can't imagine how I could be screwing this up, but I'll ask... What exactly are "proper pouring procedures"?

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For best results, you should chill your beer for several days prior to drinking. That will drop all the yeast to the bottom of the bottle. When you pour, pour slowly and gently, so as not to agitate the bottom layer of sediment. Lastly, leave a 1/3" of beer at the bottom of the bottle, so that you don't pour all the yeast into your glass.

CrossBones - they are both ways to bottle beer that is already carbonated (from a pressurized keg), so you don't naturally carbonate in the bottles.

http://www.blichmannengineering.com/beergun/beergun.html

I like doing it this way because you don't have that last oz of yeast in the bottom of the bottle, and typically the beer is as clear as you can get without filtering.

OP -- what's your situation re temperature control and fermentation time? I'm just three batches into this hobby, but I've made huge progress in terms of clarity and non-yeasty-tasting beer between my first batch and my third with a $12 swamp cooler and a little patience.

(a swamp cooler is a big bucket you put your fermenter, cold water, and swappable frozen milk jugs in to keep temps under control -- use the search feature, there are tons of threads on them)

Batch #1 fermented between 68* and 75* during active fermentation, and spent about three weeks between pitching and bottling -- the recipe was for an IPA, but it tasted more like hefe.

I kept batch #3 between 60* and 65* during active fermentation, an extra couple days between 68* and 72* to let the yeasties finish up once the airlock activity slowed down, then kept it around 60* for another three weeks or so, for a total fermentation time of about four and a half weeks, et, voila -- a clear IPA flavored with hops and malt rather than yeast.

I can't speak to kegging and yeast starters and fridge-temp cold-crashing, but a cheap, simple swamp cooler and just a couple extra weeks made a huge difference for my beer. I'd at least give these simple fixes a shot before attempting trickier/more expensive fixes.

feinbera said:

OP -- what's your situation re temperature control and fermentation time?

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I converted an old upright freezer to a beer cooler, so I can ferment at whatever temp I choose. Right now I have a Magic Hat #9 clone in the fermenter - it spent the first four weeks at about 64 degrees, and I lowered the temp to 35 degrees a couple of days ago to finish it off. I'm planning to bottle tonight.

This is also the first batch with which I've used a wort chiller (made it myself, and it's very efficient), so previous batches have admittedly suffered from a poor to non-existent cold crash before pitching. I'm pretty sure that's why my Iron Rat Stout is almost undrinkably yeasty...

OP, this is something I'm not familiar with - what's the connection between slow wort chilling and yeasty flavor?

thasnazzle said:

OP, this is something I'm not familiar with - what's the connection between slow wort chilling and yeasty flavor?

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I'm kinda new at this, so I'm probably not the right guy to answer, but... I'm pretty sure that the cold break after boiling helps to precipitate out bad stuff like proteins and such. Now that I think about it, I guess I don't know how this would make the beer taste yeasty, since at that point there's no yeast in the wort. I just know that I had no cold break, owing to a lack of ice in the house, and now the beer tastes terrible.

Bring a bottle to a homebrew club meeting and let someone diagnose the off flavor. You may be describing another issue as "yeasty".