Would You Centrifuge

Hi All, I'm very new to home brewing so please tell me what you think. I own a small centrifuge, not the type that you put a thousand little vials in either. It looks like one that a larger brewery might use, except it's made for small volume ideally 2L - 20L. It could do more, it would just take longer. So here's the question should I try it? Would you try it? If you would answer yes to either of those questions what type of beer would you use?
Thanks for the opinions

By the way I am currently making a dunkeweizen!! I will not clear that!

As a chemist who uses them frequently, I have often wished I could use one to get the yeast out after fermentation. I would definitely use one.

So what would you brew?

I would be interested to see how a lager would turn out, let a few minutes of super high gravitational force do what a month of cold temps normally accomplishes.

Oxygenation is your enemy with the centifuge. If you can avoid it, yes, it would do a great job

A couple of thoughts:
1) if you are going to bottle condition, could this actually take enough yeast out of solution to make that process slow/difficult
2)what a great way to collect yeast!
3)post pics and results!

Ok, so I'll try it, and I'll take pictures. It will be a while before I make a lager, unless there is someone in the San Diego area that wants to volunteer their brew.

I'd definitely use the centrifuge to pellet yeast for freezing and long-term storage. Add some glycerol. As for trying to centrifuge beer to drink--sounds like more trouble than it's worth. If you do it, let me know how it works out--he says, starting to wonder how he could justify the purchase of a centrifuge.

collecting the yeast will be interesting since I'll have to scrape it off of the bowl afterwards. The centrifuging the beer should be really easy. My centrifuge has two separate tri-clamp connections one supply, and one return. The return will clear beer. I think if I prime the equipment first it will minimize the introduction of air to the beer. I'm wondering if there will be enough yeast left to bottle condition since I don't have kegging equipment. So I have one vote for clearing a Lager, any other suggestions?

foose212 said:

...I think if I prime the equipment first it will minimize the introduction of air to the beer...

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I am not sure what you plan to do to prime, but what I seems to be the case in larger breweries is they fill the vessel with water to remove the air, then push the water out with CO2 or N2 to leave an inert atmosphere.

Thanks for the advice on using C02 for priming. I was just thinking about priming with water and then chase with my brew until my collection changed color. I think CO2 is a much better idea.

I know Sierra Nevada centrifuges, then they add a small dose of yeast back for the bottle conditioning. Can we see a pic of this centrifuge you plan on using? I've only ever seen one, Surly Brewing uses one, here's a link to a youtube vid at Surly,
. I was curious what something like the one at Surly cost, I was guessing it was around 50,000, so I asked a friend who works in the pharmaceutical manufacturing field, he guessed the setup that Surly was using was probably around 400,000. Like somebody said earlier I would really be worried about oxidizing the beer.

As I said a couple days ago. Centrifuges are awesome. Sierra Nevada and Russian River both use one. Last time I checked, they both make pretty awesome beer. It's a great alternative to filtering.

You really, really have to watch out for oxygenation. A centrifuge can oxygenated your beer in a HURRY

So the centrifuge is actually a westfalia just like you see in the post by Buna Beer, but this one is small. It was actually used for process development for biotech companies. Most centrifuges / separators are hermetic, that means they are airtight systems. I believe I just need to prime the system prior to running. Like I said in my first post I just brewed my first batch last week, and I was just pondering about clearing and I realized I had this sitting in my garage. Come to find out, it's used pretty often at large brewery's. If anyone in the San Diego area wants to try it out with me, be my guest.

My guess is the one at Surly cost about 300,000.

attached is a picture of my little guy.

foose212 said:

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attached is a picture of my little guy.

Click to expand...

very cool.

I believe most Trappist breweries centrifuge their beers too, so there has to be something to it. I'd suspect you have to dose your bottled beers with more yeast as well as priming sugar to bottle carbonate after, but the amount of yeast could be controlled and likely only a small amount if you do it that way. I think Brew Like a Monk has a yeast dosage chart in it somewhere.

Purge it with co2 prior to running your beer through, otherwise, ya, giddy up. It would be especially beneficial for big double IPAs because you can spin the wort out of the hops, and mitigate the massive wort loss from 4+ ounces of dry hops.

Why wouldn't you try it?
A good experiment is always fun.

You're right I don't have a good reason not to try it, guess I'm just nervous being a newbie brewer. By the way I think my first batch is stuck. It had a vigorous ferment for the first 2 days, then fell to a crawl for two days, and well now... nothing.

I centrifuged an Orange Hefeweizen just because I could. The beer turned out really clear. Attached is an after picture of the beer. Sorry forgot to take before shots and pictures of the process, but it was really really cool!

I'll take more pictures next time.

can someone explain how this works? not the principle of centrifugation, i work in a lab and centrifuge stuff every day, and not why you would centrifuge beer, that's pretty obvious. i mean specifically the type that is used in a brewery. i assume the beer isn't going into bottles or tubes, and is being kept away from air. so, how?? what's inside that thing?? very curious and cool that you have one. must be great to get your dry hops dry again. thanks!

So this is a picture from the Westfaila site. Basically you pump in the solution into the centrifuge and the solids are thrown against the wall of the bowl, then the liquid is free to flow to the bottom of the centrifuge and that is pumped back up and out as a clear solution

I guess I forgot to mention, that took about 5 mins to clear a 5 gallon batch. I set the centrifuge on its lowest setting 8000G, I think next time I'll step it up to 12000G. I just threw some sugar in the bottle from the picture to see if the yeast is still in solution.

So I put a bottle in the fridge and it got hazy. I did a little reading, and I was thinking next time I'll put my ferment bottle in the fridge a couple of days before I try to centrifuge. Anybody have any other suggestions?

So I'm running the centrifuge right now. Below is a pick. I'm doing a recirculation on the beer, but I am getting foam. It's very small bubbles, almost looks like the head of guinness. What do you guys think, am I getting air in the centrifuge, or is it carbonation from the fermentation process?

Seems like a centrifuge would be perfect for decanting a yeast starter.

Looks like a little gyro centrifuge. I use those all the time. Quite a bit of yeast will come out in the heavy phase but you will build up quite a bit in the bowl which will limit your max feed volume, depending on the configuration of the stack. What kind of disc stack is in there? concentrator, purifier, clarification? Also, if you put a little back pressure on the light phase (partially open valve), you will get better results in terms of clarity.

Vigo! So it's actually a clarification system. Back pressure on the light phase? Are you suggesting that I put a little pressure on the pool vessel?

I think I figured out my foaming issue though, I think my flow rate is too slow, and I'm not keeping the bowl flooded. I just ran my pump and realized it only pumps about 500 ml/min. I'm thinking I'll buy a keg and pressurize it, and send the product out that way. I figure I can increase the flow rate. Maybe 5 L/min.

Vigo, any other suggestions?

This is great and all but my biggest question is How and why did you get this piece of equipment?

The short answer is I bought a bunch of used lab equipment for my garage. The centrifuge was in the bundle, and never had a use for it till now.

So, it's just a toy to play with.

foose212 said:

I centrifuged an Orange Hefeweizen just because I could. The beer turned out really clear. Attached is an after picture of the beer. Sorry forgot to take before shots and pictures of the process, but it was really really cool!

I'll take more pictures next time.

Click to expand...

I would totally centrifuge if I could. A lab I worked in as an undergrad had this ancient cast iron centrifuge with long arms that could probably hold beer bottles. I wish I could buy one of those suckers off of ebay and spin down my bottles after they are conditioned. It would totally kick ass, although I would be worried about the bottles breaking in there. I do have a centrifuge at work that could probably handle 8 oz bottles (I use them from time to time), but it spins under vacuum, and having a bottle blow in it would be an effing disaster, lol, so there's no way in hell I'm ever going to try it.

For that size of centrifuge, 2 liters per minute would probably be ideal. Too much will flood the bowl and kill your separation. From your pic, it looks like the clarified beer exits the centrifuge via a hose. That would be the hose to slightly add a little back pressure to until you get the separation you want. The one I use (pictured) only has a pan for the "light phase" and applying back pressure is not an option.

Vigo, I see a hose in the background, is that what feeds yours centrifuge? If so what are you using to pump into it? I was thinking about buying an aquarium pump to feed my system, since my peristaltic isn't really ideal. So you keep talking about light phase, not sure what that is. I can change the speed on my centrifuge, but it doesn't have phases. If I get a better pool vessel I could add pressure to the vessel to provide back pressure.

My user manual says that it can handle up to 1400 L/hr so I'll play around with it when I get a pump.

Vigo is yours for dairy products? Thanks again for the information!

The "light phase" is the stream of clarified beer whereas the "heavy phase" is the sludge with concentrated cells. Basically the two exit streams. I use a watson marlow pump to feed two or three liters a minute. I'm using it to separate biodiesel that is produced by bacterial fermentation. We have strains of ecoli that produce biodiesel and fatty alcohols. Centrifugation is our primary form of recovery.

I work at Alfa Laval here in Stockholm and we sell these centrifuges to all kinds of industries all over the world. Of course we also have a lot of customers in the brewery industry. Here we call them Separators though, since the separate liquids, particles, gases etc using centrifuge technology.

What I do exactly is more along the lines of designing, building and running them together with our customers, or rather run the separator systems (including valves, pumps etc) with them.
We recently delivered a Separator to Brewdog for their new brewery in Britain, they also previously bought a smaller system earlier last spring.

http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article/putting-together-a-brewery-part-6
http://lh4.ggpht.com/-Beb4t52bzOs/T5WsZbdZkDI/AAAAAAAAX18/hlae9Y-b9_Q/s1600-h/image%255B4%255D.png

Depending on size of course a Separator with a PX-system would be a dream piece of equipment for any brewery for many of the reasons you have already mentioned here. A PX-system means that you continuosly discharge the sludge (particles) from the liquid and don't ever really have to stop to clean out the bowl. This is the system that you see in the Sierra Nevada video, although as correctly pointed out it comes from Westphalia. (Alfa Laval = Blue, Westphalia = Green).

Normally we sell a patented system to breweries that feeds the separator from the bottom to breweries which we call hermetic. Westphalia don't produce these and can therefore not ensure a fully hermetic process even though you can prime these with an inert gas. Sierra Nevada recently bought new hermetic separators for their new breweries in North Carolina as well.

Regarding the back pressures, this is definitely a good idea as it not only clarifies better but also makes minimizes the risk of foaming. The higher the flow the higher the back pressure is the rule of thumb.