Strain beer before bottling?

[TPD2245]

I have an IPA fermenting right now. I plan on dry hopping later this week. I know filtering removes some great flavors from beer, but I was wondering about just straining the beer before I put it in my bottling bucket. I thought about using one of those paint strainer bags you get at Home Depot. They seem fine enough to catch particles, but porous enough to allow yeast to pass through for bottle conditioning.

Any thoughts? Will doing this remove yeast and screw up my bottle conditioning?

 

[mrdauber64]

I do this all the time to filter out my hops I use for dryhopping. It works great and I still get plenty of yeast in the bottle for carbing. I highly recomend this method to filter out your dryhops!

 

[jsv1204]

My 2-cents: dry hop with a nylon mesh bag and transfer to secondary with an auto-siphon that has the cap on the bottom. The cap will prevent transfer of trub - the bag will allow you to remove the spent hops.

I think running through a strainer post-ferment carries a huge oxidation risk.

 

[BrewThruYou]

I always worry about oxidation when using paint strainer bags post-fermentation. How are you intending to use it - on the end of your siphon, lining the bottling bucket, etc.?

 

[TPD2245]

I haven't decided if I want to throw the hops directly in, or put them in a sterilized strainer bag for dry hopping. If I throw them straight in, I definitely want to strain the beer before it goes into the bottling bucket. My plan for that scenario was to sterilize a strainer bag, put my auto siphon inside of the strainer bag, then submerge the strainer bag and auto siphon into my fermenting vessel, then siphon the beer into the bottling bucket. Basically, strain the beer before it goes into the siphon.

If I do the dry hopping in a strainer bag, I may skip the straining I just described. My concern with dry hopping in the straining bag is not as much of the beer being exposed to the hops. I want as much of the beer as possible mixing the hops.

 

[carlisle_bob]

Hi

The basic difference between a filter and a strainer is the size of the stuff they let through. You can get filters in *many* grades of fineness. Deciding where strainers stop and filters start - not easy. Look into a coarse insert for a normal filter setup ...

Bob