Filtering question (easy)

Liberty97045 · Mar 8, 2012

I would like to reduce or eliminate the sludge at the bottom of my bottles. I am pretty careful when siphoning to the bottling bucket but I still have 1/8" of funk at the bottom.

Would filtering it during the transfer help at all? Would there be any negative effect on the beer or the carbonation?

I was thinking about using a coffee filter set up.

mid_knight · Mar 8, 2012

Don't know what you are seeing - but the sludge at the bottom of my bottles is due to yeast settling after carbonation. And I need the yeast to carbonate beer in the bottle.

brewit2it · Mar 8, 2012

Liberty97045 said:
I would like to reduce or eliminate the sludge at the bottom of my bottles. I am pretty careful when siphoning to the bottling bucket but I still have 1/8" of funk at the bottom.

Would filtering it during the transfer help at all? Would there be any negative effect on the beer or the carbonation?

I was thinking about using a coffee filter set up.

If you filter too fine you will filter out yeast and it wont carb. Filtering is also a step that could potentially add unwanted O2 or bacteria. Some folks tie a mesh bag to their racking stick to cut down on sediment. Of course you are always going to get some sediment in your bottles as yeast falls to the bottom of the bottle.

Id say forget filtering and look into kegging. Once you do you will never look back.

nbolmer · Mar 8, 2012

Liberty97045 said:
I would like to reduce or eliminate the sludge at the bottom of my bottles. I am pretty careful when siphoning to the bottling bucket but I still have 1/8" of funk at the bottom.

Would filtering it during the transfer help at all? Would there be any negative effect on the beer or the carbonation?

I was thinking about using a coffee filter set up.

It's yeast that has dropped out of suspension after doing their job. Bottle conditioned beer will have yeast at the bottom. If you want filtered beer, you will need to force-carbonate it, unless you naturally carbonate in a keg, then bottle it from the keg. Don't use coffee filters, I doubt that would work, and you'd have to sanitize them somehow.

Revvy · Mar 8, 2012

Some sediment is required for bottle carbing, whether it's commercial or homebrewed beer.

If you long primary you will compress the trub and get most of the beer back.

You'll find that more and more recipes these days do not advocate moving to a secondary at all, but mention primary for a month, which is starting to reflect the shift in brewing culture that has occurred in the last 4 years, MOSTLY because of many of us on here, skipping secondary, opting for longer primaries, and writing about it. Recipes in BYO have begun stating that in their magazine. I remember the "scandal" it caused i the letters to the editor's section a month later, it was just like how it was here when we began discussing it, except a lot more civil than it was here. But after the Byo/Basic brewing experiment, they started reflecting it in their recipes.

Fermenting the beer is just a part of what the yeast do. If you leave the beer alone, they will go back and clean up the byproducts of fermentation that often lead to off flavors. That's why many brewers skip secondary and leave our beers alone in primary for a month. It leaves plenty of time for the yeast to ferment, clean up after themselves and then fall out, leaving our beers crystal clear, with a tight yeast cake.

I get little if any sediment in my bottles, simply by opting for a long primary. This is my yeastcake for my Sri Lankin Stout that sat in primary for 5 weeks. Notice how tight the yeast cake is? None of that got racked over to my bottling bucket. And the beer is extremely clear.

That little bit of beer to the right is all of the 5 gallons that DIDN'T get vaccumed off the surface of the tight trub. Note how clear it is, there's little if any floaties in there.

When I put 5 gallons in my fermenter, I tend to get 5 gallons into bottles. The cake itself is like cement, it's about an inch thick and very, very dense, you can't just tilt your bucket and have it fall out. I had to use water pressure to get it to come out.

Half the time I forget to use moss, and you can't tell the difference in clarity.

I get the barest hint of sediment in my bottles....just enough for the yeast to have done the job of carbonating the beer.

And the only filtering my beer gets is through my kidneys.