Need help filtering 20 gal of beer

[Todes]

Hello, me and two friends want to make some beer. We are going to buy? 30 gallon plastic buckets because they are cheap. And want to filter the beer. I have seen some videos on how to keg and filter using cornys. The way I have seen is this. First you transfer the beer from the fermenter to the corny. Then with co2 you pass the beer from the corny through the filter in to another corny. I expect to get 20 gallons of beer in 4 cornys. How many cornys do We need? Is there another vessel that We should get instead of the cornys?
Is there a better way?
Thank you

 

[timdillon36]

You would need a total of 5 5g cornies. Fill keg A and filter into keg B. Refill A and filter into C and so on. B C D E are now full of filtered beer.

Any type and size of keg will work the same was as long as the math adds up.

 

[IslandLizard]

You would need 5 cornies at minimum. [never mind].

Why do you want to filter?

And I have no imagination why you would ever want 30 1-gallon plastic buckets. Use 4 6.5-gallon brew buckets, stick an airlock on them, keep 'em in a temperature controlled area and you're golden!

 

[kh54s10]

If you are just starting and want to make 30 gallons of beer at a time. Either in one 30 gallon bucket or 30 one gallon buckets, I would advise against it. I would go with a good commercial 5 gallon ingredient kit, learn the processes, then go bigger.

In 6+ years of brewing I have never filtered a beer. Ask yourself, what do I know about why you filter, or do not filter a beer, then figure out the rest.

 

[panaceabeachbum]

I wonder if we all read the same post,

He said he is making 20 gallons of beer, plans to put it in a 30 gallon plastic container then filter the beer while transferring it to 4qty 5 gallon corny kegs. Seems doable to me.

The down side I would see is unless the 30gal container has a lid you risk introducing unwanted trash or otherwise contaminating the beer. Then you need filters and pump of some sort to move the beer thru the filters. I just use a pair of the canister type filters from amazon that go under the sink and one of my little chugger pumps.

 

[casualbrewer]

Have yet to find a filter that does a good job...

 

[owmatooth]

in reality, you don't necessarily have to go from the filter into a corny. you can go back into a 30 gallon bucket and then rack the beer into 4 cornies. One less corny, but one extra bucket...

 

[panaceabeachbum]

I have never found a really good filter either, I just run a couple so I dont have to be quite as careful when racking

 

[MizzouFermentationScience]

My very first batch of beer was 29 gallons - we had access to a really bad ass propane burner (named "the general"). Unfortunately we didn't have access to a decent mash tun, grain mill, or plate chiller. It was a nightmare and the corresponding 300 bottles (that's right, we bottled it) reflected the problems, problems also reflected on my roommates chest where he was seriously burned when tube connecting the two immersion chillers came loose and became an antipersonnel weapon. I digress but I support amateurs brewing large batches because you run into a lot of problems that you have to overcome in order to save the huge investment- very rich learning environment.
1- why risk one large fermentation instead of multiples? No more work really and you can cold crash buckets in the fridge.
2- why filter? Clarity can be achieved with fining (but then again who cares about clarity?), microbes won't be a concern really in kegged beer.
3- if this is a cheap way to make booze for underage kids, "wine" is easier.
4- filtration needs to accomplish a purpose, filtering to filter achieves nothing. I have filtered a lot of wine using the corny system, never beer. Filtration usually requires multiple pore sizes done in sequence. The first pass has to be pretty coarse and has almost no effect on clarity and no effect on microbes. Average pore size of at least 300 um to start, probably 700. Then another pass at 150-200 for polishing which would clarify. It would take another two steps at 100 and 50 um to filter out yeast and bacteria would still make it through- not to mention the fact that this is all time wasted unless you are extremely thorough in sanitizing your equipment. Furthermore, I'm not sure but chill haze may not filter out unless the beer is cold filtered. I know heat liable proteins in wine can't be filtered out. Farthestmore, the filter housing and cartridges/pads would cost money that could otherwise be used for lawyers and medical expenses.