Steel Wool Filter in Auto-Siphon when Racking

Today I was told that some people use steel wool in their auto-siphon when racking to be sure to get the cleanest beer as possible into secondary. Has anyone here done this?

The reason I ask is because of my issue of the broken hydrometer. There's still a slight chance that a small amount of glass is sitting at the bottom of my carboy. I'm told that this happens every now and then and to just take extra precautions while filtering.

I think cheesecloth or a nylon sack would be a better filter than steel wool.

i would second the cheesecloth. Multiple layers if theres glass and i would also leave the last gallon or so behind

It's likely any bits of glass will be long buried in the sediment. Just rack carefully. Just the idea of steel wool in contact with my beer makes my teeth hurt.

>>makes my teeth hurt<<

I totally agree. It sounded really weird when I heard about it. My first thought was off flavors from the beer passing through the metal. Strange... I think I'm going to go with a few layers of cheese cloth.

I think you have heard of people using SS Scrubbies, Not so much Steel Wool. This is usually for Boil Kettle Filtering.


I use one clean one each brew around my copper diptube and use pellet hops exclusively. All the filtering I need. Last weekend I has 9oz of pellets and it worked fine.

considering steel wool will rust like a mother...don't want it near my beer.

Racking a beer through raw steel wool WILL leach enough iron into your beer to at least ruin the flavor.

If you are the idiot I am, you might try running your mash off through steel wool into your kettle, because you forgot the cute little stainless strainer that you usually use.

I've found out the extremely unpleasant way that running 7 gallons of 170 degree wort through raw steel wool will not only leach enough iron into your beer to ruin the taste, it may also drive the iron content of your beer to dangerous levels.

I brewed a belgian several weeks ago at a friend's house. I noticed a very dark residue in my carboy after fermentation had completed, but had forgotten already that I had used SW as a filter, so I bottled it. I had a small sample during bottling, noted the iron taste, and figured it was just metallic off-flavor, or that I was tasting iron from work (auto tech - bottled right when I got home).

The next day I was feeling a bit tired and achy at work, but figured I may have been just getting the flu or whatever... lasted for a day or so.

The following weekend I cracked another to see if it still had the taste, and it did, but since I'd already had a couple of other brews it didn't bother me much, so I drank it.

The following morning I woke up achy and a bit disoriented, and the day just got worse. While there has been no vomiting (thankfully), the last two days have been a bit... dehydrating, to say the least... That, along with nasty fatigue. Since this is the third day, I'm getting a bit concerned, but, I'll see how it goes.

The plan is to send a sample to a lab to get it tested for heavy metals, which will be the only way to confirm what I suspect. A brewer friend of mine has Sierra Nevada do analysis on his beers, so I guess that's where it's going.

I will update this thread when I find out what's up. Meanwhile, my advice is to use only stainless steel when making beer. There is NO upside to using cheap steel wool.

Of course, in hindsight, it's the only thing that makes sense.