I am considering starting to filter my beer. I have seen several
discussions on the correct and best way to accomplish this task.
IMO, the beer I make may be worthy of filtration!
So, do I use a plate or a cannister style device?
After I decide on that, what size filter is best to be utilizing to
accomplish diamond brite beer AT AN AFFORDABLE level?
I am set up for Keg methods and with the additon of a few
fittings would be good to go on this,
I think I would like to filter at 1 micron absolute, and be able to
reuse, wash my filter media…can anyone point to a source and
style of filter for this?
Years back, someone gave me a filtration system. Used it twice, then gave it to someone else. From my point of view, it was too much hassle for something I could achieve by simply letting the beer sit for a while longer. What can I say, I’m lazy! ;) YMMV.
Brew Strong did a show about filtering that was pretty helpful for me. Someday I would like to start filtering so that I can travel with kegs and not stir up all of the gunk from the bottom.
Like Denny, I filtered a couple times and found it was a pain in the butt that produced results that could be replicated by doing nothing for a couple weeks.
If you want to travel with kegs, let the beer sit in the fermenter/secondary until it is clear. If you can’t wait, add gelatin a couple days before you keg. I usually do both and occasionally travel with my kegs and my beer is very clear.
Lately, I’ve been drinking beer out of stoneware steins and have been less concerned about the clarity of my beer.
I once tried to make filtering part of my process to get clear beer. The system I was using was a house water filter with a spun filter as filter media. Setting up the system was always a pain since I felt that I needed to purge it with deaerated water. In the end the beer was still hazy since the filter didn’t take out all the chil haze. To get a filter media sharp enough to get a brilliant beer I would have needed to spend much more money.
A plate filter was not an option since I need to filter after the beer is carbonated.
Finally I noticed that I can also make clear beers w/o filtration or the use of finings. So it must be a brewing process or ingredient problem if I have hazy beers. My focus has since been on paying attention to what was different when I end up with a hazy beer. In addition to that I cut the dip tube in my secondary/lagering/cold conditioning kegs to leave behind a full pint. That eliminates sediment in the serving keg.
For me filtering would only be worth the effort if I would have to filter a lot of beers and don’t have as much cold conditioning time available as I have now.
I don’t want to scare you away from giving it a try as it will be a worthwhile experience. But be wary of any subtantial financial investments you make for this unless you know it will work for you in the long run.
Good Stuff folks, thanks. I do not have a problem with hazy beer usually.
and I even put all the trub from the bk into the fermenter. It just seemed
like a way to replicate commercial beers and the clarity achieved. I read
on some other posts about filtering, and it was compared to consuming
your garden vegtables without washing them off… ??? :-\
I guess I was just mainly curious to see how my homebrew stax up
against something like a filtered commercial brew.
I thought If I could get it going without a major outlay of coin…it’d be doable…
I’ve never tried filtering (I’m so cheap, I still don’t have a kegging setup), but does anyone have any commentary on this?
I always thought that filtering was only a way to help clear the beer, not remove off-flavors from the yeast. Most people usually say that leaving the yeast in helps with beer aging.
It has been my experience that it is possible to precipitate haze and yeast through cold conditioning. But it seems to depend on how the beer has been brewed. Some of my lagers have been clear after just 3 weeks at 32F while others took longer or never cleared and I had to use gelatin. As a commercial brewer I would be using filtration though. It makes the process more predictable.
Comercial brewers are also concerned about long term stability, i.e., shelf life. Palmer’s “How to Brew” has an Appendix on Beer Clarity and why (and if) you should care about it.
I have gotten in the habit of using gelatin on any beer I make that is darker than 18-20 SRM. My opinion is that it works wonders! Gelatin is a cheap and easy way to clarify.
There have been several folks in our club that have tried to filter their beer and all of them did it a couple of times and came to the conclusion that the effort and expense was just not worth it.
I believe most commercial brewers use diatomaceous earth filters to clarify their beer? Seems like I remember seeing that kind of a set-up at the St. Arnolds? I could have dream that though! :
The initial cost of the machine would be expensive but the pads seem reasonable at about $2 each. Maybe someone could plan on doing several beers in one day and get more than one pass out of a filter?
I own plate filter for about 1.5 year and never used it.
There is just something about filtering that I can not make myself to do it.
So far I am using cold conditioning for clarifying but Gelatin is close behind.
Gelatin is a cheap and easy way to clarify.