How do you filter your beer?

[LBussy]

Um, yes, yes I do. The last time we met was in Appleton Wisconsin after the storm.

Okay ... trying to remember now because I *think* I already knew this, didn't I? Dave? Am I close?

I killed brain cells that trip. Adler's Appetite was playing at the bar near the hotel and I slept through that whole storm.

 

[Firewalker11]

The Housing: HYDRONIX 10"

The Filter: HYDRONIX 2.5"

Quick Disconnect: Ball Lock Gas MFL

You will need a 8.5" section of 1/2" copper tubing, or stainless/aluminum, whatever you want to use. Mix up a few grams of water clear epoxy, and glue the tube into the cap so that the tube ends about 1/2" away from the end of the housing base. This allows you to recover almost all of your beer/cider from the bottom of the housing.

 

[Firewalker11]

Okay ... trying to remember now because I *think* I already knew this, didn't I? Dave? Am I close?

I killed brain cells that trip. Adler's Appetite was playing at the bar near the hotel and I slept through that whole storm.

Yeah, sorry, that's why I was a little bit of a jerk in my first post, I thought you knew! Good to see you alive and kicking!

 

[Firewalker11]

The filters are by HYDRONIX, I use a pleated one with beers that are still pretty dirty with hops and flaoties. The pleated filter has the ability to hold about X10 more sediment than the spin one but you have to go slower and use less pressure.

The spun filter is great for beer/cider that has settled already, just some haze and such. I use this for stopping the fermentation where I want it, at the sweetness I want without the use of chemicals or heat.

 

[Firewalker11]

A note about filtering.

"Almost all commercial brewers filter their beer to rapidly improve flavor and clarity. Yet few home brewers filter their beer, either because they lack the equipment or prefer the raw flavor of unfiltered beer. However filtering is a good option for intermediate to advanced brewers who want crystal clear, smooth flavored beer.

Why Filter?

Filtering removes yeast, tannins and some large proteins from the beer that contribute both to off flavors and haze. While many of these impurities will eventually precipitate out of the beer through lagering and aging, filtering accelerates the process by removing them in minutes instead of weeks or months. This is a big reason why commercial brewers use filters – time is money and it is much cheaper for them to filter the beer than store it for weeks or months.

Filtering also has the advantage that it can remove very small impurities from the beer – even those that would not fall out of suspension in the natural aging process. Filters can remove particles as small as 1 micron or even smaller. This can result in a cleaner flavor and much better clarity than is possible with natural aging.

A question many new brewers ask is if they can filter their beer to eliminate the sediment in the bottom of the bottles? The answer is unfortunately no, unless you have some kind of kegging/carbonation system. Filtering the beer removes the yeast from it, so if you filter and then bottle with priming sugar you will just get flat beer.

The only way to filter and bottle beer is to filter your beer into a keg, then artificially carbonate it, and then bottle it from the keg using a counter-pressure bottle filler or beer gun. Also having a pressurized keg makes it much easier to use an inline filter, as gravity works very slowly with typical beer filters."

-Brad Smith-

 

[LBussy]

Yeah, sorry, that's why I was a little bit of a jerk in my first post, I thought you knew! Good to see you alive and kicking!

Likewise my friend. It's been a while. I have greatly limited my pyro but I'm still a member of the local club and you know - once a rocket man always a rocket man.

The filters are by HYDRONIX, I use a pleated one with beers that are still pretty dirty with hops and flaoties. The pleated filter has the ability to hold about X10 more sediment than the spin one but you have to go slower and use less pressure.

The spun filter is great for beer/cider that has settled already, just some haze and such. I use this for stopping the fermentation where I want it, at the sweetness I want without the use of chemicals or heat.

Have you ever back-sweetened after filtration? That's something I am coming up on (obviously not with a beer) and I might experiment with this. While intellectually I know that a 1 micron filter should work for that, I've never trusted it.

I like the dip-tube arrangement to limit loss. How do you purge air from this setup before you start?

 

[Firewalker11]

Likewise my friend. It's been a while. I have greatly limited my pyro but I'm still a member of the local club and you know - once a rocket man always a rocket man.


Have you ever back-sweetened after filtration? That's something I am coming up on (obviously not with a beer) and I might experiment with this. While intellectually I know that a 1 micron filter should work for that, I've never trusted it.

I like the dip-tube arrangement to limit loss. How do you purge air from this setup before you start?

Yes! That is what got me into filtering in the first place. I had a cider that finished just under 1, around .998 or so. It was really too tart to drink so I wanted to back sweeten it but knew that the yeast remaining in the cider would kick on as soon as the bottles made it to room temperature. I didn't want that to happen so I got a filtration setup and proceeded to back sweeten with frozen concentrate. It worked perfectly.

I still have your address if it's the same as it was 5 years ago, I'll shoot you a bottle if you would like.

Purging is a two-step process. The first step is to run CO2 through the filter and the tubes into the housing. Then release the CO2 from the keg it's going into to purge any Oxygen out of that keg. Step D is to push the beer through the filter and the housing and into the keg. I like to pull the first couple ounces of beer that makes it through and drink that, perhaps a whole pint. Any air that was trapped inside the filter or housing would be in that first beer.

For CO2,I generally use the residual CO2 in the keg I'm pulling from, to reduce that pressure down to a maximum of 5 PSI for transfer. Not a lot of extra CO2 from a CO2 bottle wasted that way.

 

[LBussy]

Address is the same. I swore I would never move again after this last time.

Sounds do-able. I'd better make a 10-gallon batch just to make it worth my while though.

 

[Firewalker11]

The Old Orchard frozen juice was $0.99 a container, 15 gallons ran $42 for the juice and another $10 for the yeast. Since there is no krausen, its also ideal for keg conditioning and carbing. I let it go all the way to my finish gravity then filter it -unless- I want it to finish first to the natural gravity of the yeast, then I close the spunding valve down to my desired carbonation and crash cool.

Since the filtering is done under pressure, cold, there is little loss in carbonation during the process.

 

[Natdavis777]

I bought a filter but never used it. Sold my filters on here. Still have the container though, may use it as a randel one day. I found I can get brite beers with some gelatin easily. Couple that with good pH, whirlfloc, and cold breaks, and its easy peasy. I have nothing against those who do utilize filters. To each their own. As long as you are making good beer, keep on keeping on.

 

[CrimsonYeti]

Whirlfloc at 10 minutes, and a good cold crash. Shouldn't need anything more than that if you rack carefully...

+1 this.

 

[LBussy]

Dave ... if you're still following. Do you use one filter cartridge per batch?

 

[Firewalker11]

Lee,

Yupper, just filtered the last batch of Cran-Pom cider yesterday and since there wasn't any trub to worry about, I just used the single spun filter. I do reuse my filters too since I just back flush them and then sanitize them. I normally get four to five filterings per filter cart, they run about $3 each on eBay.

I will filter my black IPA next week too but because of the trub, I will use the pleated one and just lower the pushing pressure to 1-2 psig from the normal 5-6 psig for the spun filter.

Yes, I understand about the rockets, heading down to the other IPA for the spring shoot inn a few weeks.

 

[LBussy]

Thanks Dave. I ordered the filter. Should be here by the weekend for this batch.