Filtering and Transfer

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danimal45

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I have been lurking here for a while, and brewing beer for about the last 10 years with decent results. I want to take it a little more seriously, and have narrowed many of my issues down to initial water quality. I live in Colorado, where the water is great, but tends to be high in minerals and in my local area tends to have quite a bit of chlorine. Never really done anything special with the water, but I have noticed a better taste when I use purified water from the store.

Also my wife has been demanding that I make a fruit beer for her. I have not had good luck with fruit beer in the past due to it being cloudy or having a sour bitter flavor that ruined the batch (might have transferred too much trying to clear up the beer and oxidized it). I want to give it another try and brew a peach cream ale with some local palisade peaches.

I bought a standard three piece 10" filter setup that I plan to use to filter my own water for the batch. The rig is basically three separate filter units, and I think that I am going to break it into two. So one of the setups will have an activated charcoal and a 1 micron filter, and that will be used to filter the water used for brewing. The second will just have a single filter unit with ball locks and will be used to transfer between kegs as described below.

So my plan is to brew a standard cream ale and wait until the primary is done. Then I will blend, boil and strain the peaches down to a syrup. There will be some small pulp in there, but hopefully not any big chunks. When the secondary is finished, even if it is still a little cloudy, I will transfer it to a keg. Then I will push it through a filter into a second keg to finish transfer and filter out any suspended junk.

Here are my questions:
1) Does my water filtering strategy sound good, and like it will be enough to clean up the water?
2) Does my plan for the peaches sound like it will provide a good fresh peach flavor to the beer?
3) What size filter should I use for filtering the beer to maintain body and flavor, but reduce cloudiness?
 
1) You cannot filter out minerals that way, you would need an RO filter/membrane for that. Both Chlorine and Chloramines are most effectively neutralized with 1/4 crushed Campden tablet dissolved in 5 gallons of water. If you don't do that you'll risk creating chlorophenols during the boil and fermentation. They yield the taste and smell of plastic, Band Aids, pharmacy, hospital, etc. to your beer.

2) Boiling peaches changes their flavor, and kills all the fine aromatics you want in your beer.
Instead, wash them well, soak in Starsan, peel, cut them into small chunks, freeze for a few days to break up the cell walls and kill wild yeasts and bacteria. Defrost, then add to your secondary fermentor, and rack your beer on top until there is only 1 inch of headspace under the airlock/bung. Leave them for a few weeks, then rack to a bottling bucket, prime, and bottle your peach beer.

You could put the peaches in a blender and freeze the pulp, then defrost and add to your fermentor.

You really need to know how to rack without adding air (oxygen) to your beer. The 2 keys are to prevent oxidation of your beer at all times and prevent infection from wild yeasts and what not, carried in with the peaches. There's a lot written about various methods.

3) Cold crashing for a few days to 2 weeks is a simple and effective method to clear beer. If needed, use some gelatin finings. Filtering beer on homebrew level is possible, but usually not needed, and can create other problems such as infection, oxidation, etc. You'll also need a decent pump to filter through 1 micron. Gravity alone won't do it.
 
I can only speak about the cloudiness, I know nothing about cleaning up water profiles beyond the Burton salts I added to my last bitter. I'm also just now doing my first fruit beer with blueberries, which I had added to the freezer for a few days, thawed a day, then froze again until needed. They were added to the saison they are flavoring this past Saturday with a healthy amount of pectic enzyme and I can most definitely say that whatever process I may have done was quite effective...

Moving on, as far as obtaining crystal clear beer, I'm a firm believer in cold crashing for a few days. My latest attempts I have added gelatin to my beers, and was utterly shocked at the incredible clarity that was obtained from both an ESB and a cream ale. My .02 :goat:
 
1) You cannot filter out minerals that way, you would need an RO filter/membrane for that. Both Chlorine and Chloramines are most effectively neutralized with 1/4 crushed Campden tablet dissolved in 5 gallons of water. If you don't do that you'll risk creating chlorophenols during the boil and fermentation. They yield the taste and smell of plastic, Band Aids, pharmacy, hospital, etc. to your beer.

2) Boiling peaches changes their flavor, and kills all the fine aromatics you want in your beer.
Instead, wash them well, soak in Starsan, peel, cut them into small chunks, freeze for a few days to break up the cell walls and kill wild yeasts and bacteria. Defrost, then add to your secondary fermentor, and rack your beer on top until there is only 1 inch of headspace under the airlock/bung. Leave them for a few weeks, then rack to a bottling bucket, prime, and bottle your peach beer.

You could put the peaches in a blender and freeze the pulp, then defrost and add to your fermentor.

You really need to know how to rack without adding air (oxygen) to your beer. The 2 keys are to prevent oxidation of your beer at all times and prevent infection from wild yeasts and what not, carried in with the peaches. There's a lot written about various methods.

3) Cold crashing for a few days to 2 weeks is a simple and effective method to clear beer. If needed, use some gelatin finings. Filtering beer on homebrew level is possible, but usually not needed, and can create other problems such as infection, oxidation, etc. You'll also need a decent pump to filter through 1 micron. Gravity alone won't do it.


1) I have done a little more research on filtering, and you are correct. I was hoping that the 1 micron filter would reduce the minerals, but it will only remove sediment which might still be a good thing so I am still going to filter the water this way. Using a reverse osmosis filter sounds like it would remove too much as people usually need to reapply minerals to their water after using it. I just wanted to make sure that there are no metals, and that the mineral profile is consistent not necessarily removed.

2) I will try the freezing approach for the peaches. Mainly I just wanted to remove enough of the fiber pulp material so that I could filter the finished product without a strainer. So leaving it in larger chunks makes more sense and I will just cast it into the keg normally and let the chunks remain with the remaining secondary products.

3) My plan was to hook two kegs together with a filter between. I would hook the ball locks on each end of the filter to the downtube lock on the kegs. Then I would push the beer through the filter using light CO2 pressure. No pump needed, and it would force it through the filter, and would fill from the bottom of the other keg so minimal air would be introduced. It is alright if it takes a little while, as long as it cleans it up nice. Does this sound like a bad idea?
 
I can only speak about the cloudiness, I know nothing about cleaning up water profiles beyond the Burton salts I added to my last bitter. I'm also just now doing my first fruit beer with blueberries, which I had added to the freezer for a few days, thawed a day, then froze again until needed. They were added to the saison they are flavoring this past Saturday with a healthy amount of pectic enzyme and I can most definitely say that whatever process I may have done was quite effective...

Moving on, as far as obtaining crystal clear beer, I'm a firm believer in cold crashing for a few days. My latest attempts I have added gelatin to my beers, and was utterly shocked at the incredible clarity that was obtained from both an ESB and a cream ale. My .02 :goat:

What temps and duration did you use for your cold crashing? I have tried it in the past and had good luck with ales, but I have not tried it on a fruit beer yet because I rarely brew them.

The last time I tried fruit beer I had used fresh blackberries in WA, and I was so excited. I blended them up and strained out the seeds then brought the juice to 170F for about 15 min. Then I added that to the secondary and transferred in the cream ale that I was brewing. I tried some of the ale during transfer and it was fantastic. But 2 weeks went by, still super cloudy. Three weeks, still just as cloudy and seemed not to be getting any better. I transferred it again (probably a mistake) and waited another week. Still cloudy. I tried it and was so disappointed. It tasted like I dumped vinegar in instead of blueberries. I have been a little hesitant to try fruit since then.
 
I think your 1-micron filter would clog up pretty darn quick, given that yeast and other trub will be caught. You'd probably need a lot more than "light pressure" to transfer after the first bolus of beer. When you say "cast it into the keg like normal"... what are doing exactly to transfer to the keg? Are you currently siphoning or doing some sort of pressure transfer?
 
You could put the peaches in a blender and freeze the pulp, then defrost and add to your fermentor.

This is what I do with my fruit now. Fishing out chunks of fruit in the fermentor wasn't fun.
 
What temps and duration did you use for your cold crashing? I have tried it in the past and had good luck with ales, but I have not tried it on a fruit beer yet because I rarely brew them.

The last time I tried fruit beer I had used fresh blackberries in WA, and I was so excited. I blended them up and strained out the seeds then brought the juice to 170F for about 15 min. Then I added that to the secondary and transferred in the cream ale that I was brewing. I tried some of the ale during transfer and it was fantastic. But 2 weeks went by, still super cloudy. Three weeks, still just as cloudy and seemed not to be getting any better. I transferred it again (probably a mistake) and waited another week. Still cloudy. I tried it and was so disappointed. It tasted like I dumped vinegar in instead of blueberries. I have been a little hesitant to try fruit since then.

Again, not a whole lot of experience with fruit beers, but that sounds like pectin haze. If you're on the hunt for clear beer, I highly suggest some pectic enzymes to help break that apart, plus it'll increase yield of juice and what not from the fruits. I'm also a Washington native, my first brew ever was a blackberry mead!

I cold crash at ~36-38 as that is what my kegerator is set to. I like to give it 48-72 hours before I take a sample, if it's not to my liking I add gelatin finings. I should just add them at the beginning... but I'm stubborn :mug:
 
I think your 1-micron filter would clog up pretty darn quick, given that yeast and other trub will be caught. You'd probably need a lot more than "light pressure" to transfer after the first bolus of beer. When you say "cast it into the keg like normal"... what are doing exactly to transfer to the keg? Are you currently siphoning or doing some sort of pressure transfer?

Just a gravity syphon and I keep it out of the solids that have precipitated out.

The 1 micron is for water purification prior to brewing. I was asking what size I should use for filtering the finished beer. I am leaning toward 5 micron for the beer filtering.

Here is my whole procedural idea:

1) Fill Keg #1 with sanitizing liquid (about 2 gallons of starsan treated water shook around)
2) Connect filtering unit to the Keg #1 “out” that has the down tube inside the keg.
3) Connect the discharge side of the filter to Keg #2 out that has the downtube.
4) Cap Keg #1 and push sanitizing liquid through the whole thing using CO2.
5) Empty Keg #2 after being sanitized.
6) Carefully transfer the beer from secondary into Keg #1 and cap it.
7) Using CO2 pressurize Keg #1 and force the beer (slowly) through the filter into Keg #2.
8) Cap Keg #2 and press up with CO2 for carbonation.

This filtering step seems simple for most beers, but I just want to avoid a lot of pulp and junk in the beer because it would quickly plug up the filter as you pointed out. But if I use full chunks of peaches, and freeze them a time or two to soften the cell walls, then when I syphon the beer out of secondary the chunks should remain just fine. With the above procedure, the whole filtering unit will be sanitized, and it will be CO2 purged. If I connect Keg #2 after dumping out the sanitizing liquid, I can again purge it with CO2 real quick and it should prevent any air addition.

This is just something that I dreamed up, and it seems simple to do. I have never filtered my beers previously, but I am curious to see if it would either speed up the process of waiting for solids to precipitate out (i'm impatient I know) or if it will possibly improve the flavor and consistency of my beers. If anyone has tried something like this, please let me know. I have seen filtering how to's but usually they require pumps and a bunch of other equipment that all needs to be sanitized and connected.
 
You could put the peaches in a blender and freeze the pulp, then defrost and add to your fermentor.

This is what I do with my fruit now. Fishing out chunks of fruit in the fermentor wasn't fun.

Does the pulp separate well in the secondary? If I do filter the beer I would want my syphon to be able to avoid the majority of the pulp when transferring it to the keg post secondary.
 
Does the pulp separate well in the secondary? If I do filter the beer I would want my syphon to be able to avoid the majority of the pulp when transferring it to the keg post secondary.

I puree it, so there aren't any chunks. I've done this with strawberry and pineapple with no clogging issues.
 
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