supercarbuilder
Well-Known Member
Bear with me because there is a lot at work here. 
I am filtering beer mead wine and cider. First off, I don't want to use clarifiers, I have tried isenglass superkleer polyclar biofine cold crashing mash and sparg ph age, everything in the book and I want more.
I started with a wine plate filter from More Beer. This worked great for a while. But I wanted an easier, faster, cleaner process. So I went with "the kit" from www.filterstore.com and It's awesome! Filters beer at 20 PSI and I did 20 gal with a .5 micron filter in one pass!
Now for the issue, the filters are reusable but $50. And I have a .5 micron. I'm going to by another filter to use in IPAs where not being perfectly clear is acceptable especially while trying to keep every bit of flavor in the beer. I'm not opposed to changing the recipe up front to make up for filtering. As for meads wine and ciders. White wines are recommended (by the filter store) to use .5 micron, red wines at 1 micron. But meads are more susceptible to loosing aroma after filtering. Ciders share some of these issues.
The filter store sells .5 1 and 5 micron filters. I don't think the 5 micron will pull out enough particles in the white wine cider or mead, but the 1 micron may pull out too much of the hop flavor in beer. Dennis at the filter store did say that in your beer/wine there seemed to be a bigger separation between .5 and 1 than the relationship between 1 and 5.
So I have the .5 and I'm looking to by the 1 or the 5 micron filter. I also am looking for a sterling bright finish as if you bought a production bottle, sometimes store-bought clarity is different than "home-brew" clarity. What have you guys found along your way? Some detail would be nice so I can use that experience with my own. Also let me know if you have better results using a different method...except just cold aging. That doesn't work with my process and schedule. Thanks!
I am filtering beer mead wine and cider. First off, I don't want to use clarifiers, I have tried isenglass superkleer polyclar biofine cold crashing mash and sparg ph age, everything in the book and I want more.I started with a wine plate filter from More Beer. This worked great for a while. But I wanted an easier, faster, cleaner process. So I went with "the kit" from www.filterstore.com and It's awesome! Filters beer at 20 PSI and I did 20 gal with a .5 micron filter in one pass!
Now for the issue, the filters are reusable but $50. And I have a .5 micron. I'm going to by another filter to use in IPAs where not being perfectly clear is acceptable especially while trying to keep every bit of flavor in the beer. I'm not opposed to changing the recipe up front to make up for filtering. As for meads wine and ciders. White wines are recommended (by the filter store) to use .5 micron, red wines at 1 micron. But meads are more susceptible to loosing aroma after filtering. Ciders share some of these issues.
The filter store sells .5 1 and 5 micron filters. I don't think the 5 micron will pull out enough particles in the white wine cider or mead, but the 1 micron may pull out too much of the hop flavor in beer. Dennis at the filter store did say that in your beer/wine there seemed to be a bigger separation between .5 and 1 than the relationship between 1 and 5.
So I have the .5 and I'm looking to by the 1 or the 5 micron filter. I also am looking for a sterling bright finish as if you bought a production bottle, sometimes store-bought clarity is different than "home-brew" clarity. What have you guys found along your way? Some detail would be nice so I can use that experience with my own. Also let me know if you have better results using a different method...except just cold aging. That doesn't work with my process and schedule. Thanks!
