Filtering Home brewing?

[hefeweizen94]

Hey everyone I am currently brewing some Honey Lager (5 Gallons) and Red Ale (1 Gallon). So I was wondering if theres some sort fo cheap device I could use to filter my beer as I bottle it? Would that be a good idea/investment for home brewing? I'd like to have a clear beer like some of the Beers I tried in the past. I'm not sure it it really matters but hey I thought I'd give it a shot if theres a way to do so for a beginner Home brewer. Gonna be bottling my Honey Lager on the 19th and my Red Ale should be ready by the 23rd!

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

Filtering beer after fermentation and before bottling sounds like an unnecessary hassle that will just increase the risk of contamination.
If you use a bit of protafloc, make sure your water has atleast 50ppm of calcuim and let the conditioning take it's timeyou are good to go. That's what I do and my beers come out pretty clear.

 

[HectorJ]

What Erik said....

If you filter it and remove the yeast, you will need to force carbonate it prior to bottling. That's a potential pain.

There are a few things you can do to make your beer clearer without filtering:

- Add finings
- Chill the beer down to 1.5°C in the fermenter after fermentation is complete (this will make the chill haze proteins sink to the bottom of the fermenter). But that's also not easy to do in reality and it takes time.

Honestly, it's not worth the hassle.. Just enjoy your beer the way it is!

 

[RM-MN]

Patience does wonders for beer clarity. Leave your bottled beer in storage for a few months and it will clear up nicely.

It helps if you have a lot of bottled beer so some can just sit and settle while you enjoy those that have already cleared.

 

[brewdude88]

Been there, done that, it's a pita... There are options like using a regular canister water filter with a 5 micron element (I do have the set-up for this), but the hands-on time it takes to alleviate the increased risk of contamination and oxidation is not worth it in my experience. I package beer asap and let time do its thing.

 

[Electric Brewer]

What I do is when the wort is done mashing and the grain removed, I used my pump to pump the wort into a mesh filter for hop while it's heating up for the boil. That removes most of the big chunks of thrub. I thought about using a water filter before transfering to the fermenter also, but the hop filter does an ok job.

You can use a standard one stage water filter with a one micron sediment filter, but I would do it before racking in the fermenter and not after fermentation to avoid beer oxydation.

If it's yeast reduction you are looking for, then cold crash your beer.

 

[Beer Viking]

I'm planning on just brewing in accordance with the reinheitsgebot, so I will be doing a whirlpool and also preforming vorlauf. These are two things you can do without adding fining agents or buying a filtration device!

 

[Alex4mula]

When I was a rookie brewer I almost spend a lot of money on filters and crap. Then I heard about cold crashing. The expense is you will need some freezer. Luckily I had one. I put my carboys 3-5 days and transfer clear beer. More so if I add gelatin. But then I have the benefit of kegging but I don't see why it will not work with bottling.

 

[Surly]

Good advice above.
Allow me to make an assumption....you are a new brewer as you said. My assumption is you will bottle your treasured home brew.

Follow the advice above. When ready to serve your beer from the bottle chill it as you like but standing up.

Removing it carefully from the fridge without jumbling the bottles around will help the presentation.

You will find a 1/2 inch of yeast and other leftovers that settled to the bottom of each bottle. After opening the bottle slowly pour that wonderful beer into a glass. But LEAVE that 1/2 inch of grub in the bottle.

Lift that glass to toast your friends and enjoy your beer.

 

[Bramling Cross]

Filtering your beer was one of those periodic fads that swept through the homebrewing community. I bought a plate filter rig, used it once, but being a cheap SOB, I didn't have the heart to place it where it belongs, in the trash. I still have the filter and a number of pads sitting on a shelf. I'd happily cut you one hell of a deal on a practically new filtering rig, but I have no reason to hate you.

Since then, I've never, ever thought to myself, "Good beer, but a pass through the filter would make it a great beer."

Patience, excellent sanitation, proper yeast selection, coming to grips with your water, and proper use of finings will produce brilliantly clear beer. Patience and sanitation are the only necessary ingredients, the rest is optional.

 

[3dB Brewing]

You don't need to filter to get clear homebrew.

Add rehydrated Irish moss or a Whirlfloc tablet in the last 5 minutes of the boil. Alternatively, there's a (Australian?) product called BeerBrite, which appears to be unobtanium for home brewers in the USA, but for which a DIY recipe is half a Whirlfloc tablet crushed and mixed with 2.5 g Polyclar VT (PVPP) in 1/2 cup water, also added to end of boil.

White Labs Clarity Ferm is an enzyme you can add when pitching yeast, that reduces chill haze.

After fermentation, dry hopping, etc., chill the beer. A lot of the haze will precipitate out and collect on the bottom; rack the beer off it.

For even more clearing, after the cold crash, mix 1 tsp of non-flavored gelatin in 1/2 cup H2O and carefully heat to no more than 155 F (I do consecutive 10-sec bursts in a microwave) and add it to the cold beer, and let sit for a couple of days. The gelatin has an electrical charge opposite to that of "stuff" dissolved in the beer, so it clumps together and makes it heavy enough to precipitate out. Rack the beer into the bottling bucket.

As mentioned above, bottle conditioning (carbonation) generates a *new* set of mini-trub at the bottom of each bottle. Carefully pour the beer into a glass except for the last half inch; toss that. This is also why you have to clean the bottles well if you're going to reuse them. Homebrew bottles have a trub in the bottom that commercial bottles don't, and sometimes it will stick around after a casual rinse.

I usually do the DIY BeerBrite, cold crash, and gelatin fining. I only use Clarity Ferm when brewing a really light (as in SRM) ale. The beer is so clear I quit using the ubiquitous Red Solo Cup when I take my homebrew on outings -- I use clear plastic glasses so that beautiful, clear beer shines through!!! Damn, now I'm thirsty...

 

[DaWiseBrew]

I actually do filter, and have success. I don't do it to clarify the beer, filtering gives me an oxygen and sediment free transfer of finished beer to my serving keg. I secondary ferment in a corny keg and then pressure transfer through a 3 micron filter to my serving keg. Depending on the style, my beer is usually clear anyways due to process, so that isn't the point. I still cold crash, but the filter is nice to block out any yeast sediment from the bottom of the corny, or bits of dry hops that might escape my 400 micron mesh cannister. Its really not expensive to setup if you already do kegging anyways. The only additional hardware is a filter housing, which is like $20. The filters are cheap too. I don't care about efficiency rating, so its a dollar or two for a filter. I purge the housing and beer lines with co2 at the same time I purge the serving keg. It really doesn't add much time and effort as I am already expending the effort to transfer to a serving keg anyways. Obviously you wouldn't want to do this with a style where you are trying to age or condition the beer. In that case, you want to keep the yeast. I run a half barrel system, so I am usually transferring 3 corny kegs at a time. I have never had an issue with the filter clogging or anything, so it works for me!

 

[mashpaddled]

Filtering is not generally a cheap operation for brewing, I mean if you are trying to filter down to radiant clarity. Either you need a kegging setup to filter through and then force carbonate or you are filtering and then adding yeast back in. As many others have said, you can cold crash and get a beer clear enough to appear clear but retain enough yeast to bottle condition if you need to. Very few homebrewers filter before packaging partially due to cost and partially a lack of need to filter. Cold crashing, finings and good brewing practices will do enough for your beer.

 

[Jako]

Hey everyone I am currently brewing some Honey Lager (5 Gallons) and Red Ale (1 Gallon). So I was wondering if theres some sort fo cheap device I could use to filter my beer as I bottle it? Would that be a good idea/investment for home brewing? I'd like to have a clear beer like some of the Beers I tried in the past. I'm not sure it it really matters but hey I thought I'd give it a shot if theres a way to do so for a beginner Home brewer. Gonna be bottling my Honey Lager on the 19th and my Red Ale should be ready by the 23rd!

100% possible to rig something up but a little time and temp and it will be as clear as it can get. i drink every beer as if its some kellerbier. i know its almost gone by how clear it is from a keg that is.