I just purchased one of these in 300 micron. Anybody else tried one? I’m hoping it will be an upgrade over my aging hop bags.
I also plan to use it to filter wort on its way from the mash tun to the kettle (something I was previously using hop bags for). They tended to catch a decent amount of fine grain particulate (even post-vorlauf).
I have one from Stainless Brewing to fit my Blichmann 20 gal. boiler maker kettle. It is nicely built.
That looks nice. Where did you buy it?
That’s a nice filer!
Just got one. They work very well. I purchased mine after using a friends. Good bye grubby little hop bags.
I special ordered a 6x16 with the center or side hanger option. Had it within 3 days. Great customer service from Arbor Fabricating in Ann Arbor, Mi.
I went with the 4x10 which fits well in my 10 gallon megapot, and allows plenty of room for the chiller.
I ordered it from the Utah Biodiesel website, but I think it came from Arbor Fabricating.
I might buy one of the stainless dry hoppers at some point in the future (either from Arbor Fabricating or Stainless Brewing).
My birthday is next week. Think I’ll get myself a present!
I wonder if you should ask them what their welding material is. Ive never seen those kind of heat discolorations on SS sanitary welds…
I want to buy something similar to this. I like that you could use it as a spider and also as a filter for the mash tun, as well as to filter the wort going in to the fermenter. BTW I love this SS dry hopper for the keg :
http://www.stainlessbrewing.com/Dry-Hopper-with-twist-cap_p_155.html
Buy Zachs spider, Its Awesome;)
I use mine all the time and love it! Like you, I use it to filter grain from my mash tun. No Vorlauf ever. Just put the hose in the filter and open the valve. Then when the wort is coming up to boil temp, I just hose it off and drop it in the Boil Kettle for hop/spice additions.
My next purchase is their dry hop canister that will fit in corny kegs. I figure they will hold ~4 oz. of wet hops. Yum.
I finally got a chance to try this thing out yesterday. It worked great as a wort filter and seemed to do pretty well as a hop bag (I guess I’ll know more after I taste the resultant beer).
The manufacturer states this size filter can hold four ounces of pellet hops, but I think three is probably more likely given the level of the wort in the kettle near the end of the boil.
It was a lot easier to use and clean than multiple hop bags, and I feel like it allowed for better wort/hop contact. I think I might buy a second one.
I like the idea of using one of the filters, but I would be concerned about getting good hop extraction during whirlpool. Anyone put whirlpool hops in one of these things?
Not a pain to clean, huh? What about putting in your chiller? I use a hop bag here and there and love that it keeps the post boil trub to a minimum, but hate pulling the bag out to put my chiller in.
There is that. I have a plate chiller so no conflict there, but yeah, they both would not fit in my BK.
I just hosed it down with my sink’s sprayer attachment, and it cleaned right up.
The filter I bought is only 4 inches in diameter so it fits in the kettle along with my immersion chiller (I could actually fit a second one in there).
Ah, that’s cool, My kettle is definitely not big enough to fit both, unfortunately.
[soapbox]
I’ve bought two of them (a 300 and a 400 micron) - in fact i’d be willing to sell you one if you’d like, that is after you read my opinion.
For me, they suck and I will never use one again…nothing to do with construction as they are well made, more to do with functionality.
the main issues i had were (bear in mind I use an electric element brewery):
there is not an actual boil inside the filter - in fact i measured the temp with my thermocouple reader and found it to be 210-211 inside the column. not a big deal, but sort of agitating.
the big deal was that the screen quickly gets clogged with proteins from break, which prevent osmosis into and out of the column, which affects many things most importantly hop extraction. i literally could lift the entire basket out of the boil (mid boil)and have the liquid line remain at the same level as when it was in the pot, with only a slight trickle at the seams for the wort to drip back into the boil.
this was even more comical when i was chilling/whirlpooling which i do via recirculation through my chiller with the use of a pump. i put the output back to the kettle inside the filter and watched the liquid level outside the filter fall whilst the filter filled completely to the top, even despite the fact that the top 2-4 inches of the screen was completely clean and untouched during the boil.
I attempted 2-3 brews, each, with pellets and whole, and then bought the more porous screen to no different results.
the runoff was indeed cleaner, and clean up of the boil kettle was a bit easier (although now I just use a shop vac to suck out the pellet cone which isn’t all that difficult). the cleanup of the device itself was also easy, but using it was aggravating, and i did feel that my house IPA recipe, which I have made consistently for years, was a bit diminished in bittering and flavor. i could have adjusted for that, but the benefits did not outweight the aggravation.
YMMV.
[/soapbox]
I use a Blichmann hopblocker now, which after some tribulations works fine for me - I think it really only works best with Blichmann kettles. If I wasn’t using that, a good whirlpool, time to settle and a pickup tube against the side of the kettle works just fine as well.
It sounds like these filters work great at filtering. Maybe too well when using them to hold hops directly in the kettle. Why not add hops directly to the boil then use this filter to remove hops and break material when pouring into the fermenter? I don’t have a pump I just pour from kettle to fermenter. Would that work?
I use one and I have only ever experienced the clogging when I would recirculate back into the filter. Cold break is formed in the re circulation and that does indeed clog it.