Filtering Lemon, Blood Orange zest when racking to bottle

[Gaidin53]

Added lemon zest and blood orange zest 2 weeks ago when I put the beer into secondary. My understanding was that it should fall out down to the bottom and I could just rack carefully and wouldn't need to filter. A lot of zest still seems to be suspended and on the top. Any suggestions of how to filter it out so it doesn't end up in bottles? I've though about putting a nylon boil bag sterilized very well around the end when I rack to bottling bucket.

Beer is a Midwest lemon coriander Weiss

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Ryan

 

[kevokie]

You can do what you stated, it will work. Here is what I do. Before I rack to the bottling bucket, I take a little nylon gift bag...think the little bags that they put rice or birdseed in for weddings...and put it around the inside of the spigot of the bottling bucket. I then sanitize the inside of my bucket and the bag gets sanitized as well in the process. I then rack the beer into the bottling bucket. If any extra junk like zest or hops get moved to the bottling bucket, no problem, they will be "filtered out" before going into the bottle.

The reason that I don't use a bag on the racking cane is I don't want to stir up to much trub. I tried putting one of these small gift bags over the racking cane and it almost seemed like it was causing the beer to get aereated on it's way to the bottling bucket. The reason I say this is because as I was watching the beer go from one to the other, there were a ton of bubbles as well. Hope it helps.

 

[Gaidin53]

I've usually used my racking cane to bottle and not the spigot on the bucket. I just rack over for bottling into a primary fermenter bucket and then attach a shorter tube with the bottle filler. What you said sounds like a good second way to filter it before going into bottle.

 

[Gaidin53]

I stopped by Midwest today and finally got the solution. Racking cane steel mesh filter. I had to pick up a stainless steel racking cane to work with it and a plastic thing to use it on a carboy but I'm glad I've got a solution to use this time and in the future.

So the answer is a stainless steel racking cane with a racking cane steel mesh filter.

Ryan