Can You Filter A Finished Beer?

The other night, I cracked one of my beers I recently bottle-hopped with a pellet of Liberty. This was a beer that, after a few weeks in the bottle, acted like it needed a little extra aroma and head. And in both cases, it was vastly improved. The 'bad' is that the hop floaties had not settled out (a problem I hadn't had the last time I did this). I tried pouring it slowly through a coffee filter. The thick, creamy head stayed in the filter and the beer ended up nearly flat.

I'll crash a couple more bottles in the fridge for a week, but should the hop residue decide to stay in suspension, I'm wondering if there's a way of filtering it without losing head and carb? Since most filtering methods are for a dry-hopped, pre-carbed beer, they don't really apply here. I can't bring myself to drink an otherwise gin-clear beer with hop boogers floating around in it.

 

I think time, gravity, and cold are your friends in this case. I don't think there's a way to filter it without pulling out the suspended CO2...

 

You could try using a muslin bag. The coffee filter is too fine, it doesn't let enough through. A muslin bag is coarser and would let all the liquid through, and might stop the hop particles from passing through..at least some/most of them.

I'd never heard of bottle hopping..very interesting. You would imagine that a cold crash would drop all the particles out of suspension..

 

I filter my finished beer with my liver.

 

Good one!

 

Do a better job filtering your beer when racking it from the fermenter to minimize hops and trub. But it's tough to remove all trub if you're bottling, because you need the yeast to properly carbonate your beer.

 

The OP put the hops pellet in the bottle for flavour...

 

Read the original post before commenting. The OP put a pellet in the bottle. It's not hop debris from the fermenter.

 

Ah, I missed that. If he starts kegging he could use a hop sock to dry hop in the keg. I can't think of any way around some hob trub if you're adding it directly to your bottles though. Maybe buy a cheap stainless steel food strainer with a fine mesh, like they'd use to sift powdered sugar in a kitchen. Then it wouldn't aerate/foam up the beer so bad but still filter most of the larger hop chunks. But a true hop head would just drink those flavorful hops

 

I did it with another beer quite successfully. Maybe I crashed longer (or used heavier hops ), but I was able to pour all but a 1/4" from the bottom of the bottle without any hop debris, just like you'd pour before hitting the yeast. The improvement in taste and aroma was amazing! Which is why I did it on a few bottles in this batch. I'll try crashing longer and see what happens.

 

Filtering a carb beer will make flatness. It works if you from keg 1 through filter into keg 2 and then carb last. I used a water filter and hooked it up to keg. Personally I felt it was a waste. I like it unfiltered because the proteins are still there and you get a better head.