Filtering

[EvanAltman36]

I've been very pleased with the beers I've been turning out lately and all of them I have on tap now are infinitely drinkable. Well, the High Heat Chocolate Chipotle is far from a session beer, but I think the flavors are great and it's gotten good reviews from others. I'm not worried about clarity for my darker beers, but brews like my Zombie Dust clone (so good!) or my white IPA could maybe look nicer. And really, it's only an issue when I compare it to a commercial beer that has pristine clarity, and then I get envious.

I'm not entering any competitions or anything, so appearance is purely about personal vanity at this point. Is it worth it at all for me to filter for clarity if I'm not being judged or selling it?

 

[MrBIP]

I'm not entering any competitions or anything, so appearance is purely about personal vanity at this point. Is it worth it at all for me to filter for clarity if I'm not being judged or selling it?

I say if it's makes you feel good about your beer, then it's worth it. I look forward to the day that I'm kegging so that I can filter as fine as the equipment and accessories for home use will allow me to.

 

[Krimbos]

Evan

What do you do during process? I am big on clear beers also, and I filter alot

I use irish moss on every batch and double filter wort , first out of pot into bottle bucket (I use a paint strainer that fits on top of a 5 gal pail) and then I filter into carboy with filter funnel.

Works pretty well

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I have plenty of experience with filtering, cold crashing, finning and so on, Il will tell you from my personal experience that if you filter and want to keep the same flavor you have now you will need to change your recipe.

I will explain, so on the shelves today your getting 5 micron or 1 micron or a 5 with a 1 as the core, these are sold as sediment filters mainly for filtering out well water so water filtering stops particles in size of microns, so 1 micron is about as low as you would want to go without changing your beer into water, carbon will defiantly do that.

In my opinion if you want a lite beer, make a regular pale ale then filter with a 1 micron and you will get lite beer, if you use a 5 micron it filters some but most of the partials we will say as flavor are still there, if you use any filter do not get in a hurry, it will damage the filter and make it useless, filter at serving pressure around 10 psi and it will take hours but be very effective

now with that said filtering will remove carbonation so for best results filter before your carb

you will use a fair amount of C02 , you need to push the beer from one keg to the next using the out tube for both to avoid splashing, then you will need to purge the oxygen from the finished beer.

using a 5 micron slow, I think you will defiantly be happy but be warned you might lose flavor especially if you get in a hurry and the first couple of times you will go through allot of C02 so have a full tank just in case

 

[The Brew Mentor]

My suggestion is to perfect your process to make sure you're getting good hot and cold break.
I don't worry about how much I strain out pre-fermentation. I don't push everything over, but what comes over, comes over.
Strive for a good, healthy fermentation with proper pitch rate and temperature control. Warm your beer and give it a good swirl when it starts to slow down. This will help the yeast finish and drive off excessive co2. This allows the yeast to drop out and leads to clearer beer.
If your still not happy with the clarity, you can "fine" your beer with gelatin or biofine.
Time will also help. RDWHAHB!
With good process and some finings, there's no reason you cant have crystal clear beer in 2-3 week from brew day.
Good Luck,
Brian

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

oh forgot to mention I stopped filtering this last year and started cold crashing and gelatin with more aging, before I was drinking it with friends and family and led to wanted beer now, brewing every week and that was before I invested in a larger scale set up where i can now brew 15 gallons easily at a time

 

[Krimbos]

[Warm your beer and give it a good swirl when it starts to slow down. This will help the yeast finish and drive off excessive co2. This allows the yeast to drop out and leads to clearer beer. /quote]

Brian. Never heard this before. So, when fermentation slows, give it a swirl and try to increase temp? How much?

 

[The Brew Mentor]

If I'm fermenting @ 63-68°, I'll raise it to 70-71°
This just helps the yeast stay a little more active during the finish. Actually it's a diacetyl rest and yes, it'a done on an ale.
During the end of fermentation, the yeast are producing less or no co2. By swirling the primary fermenter, you'll drive off a lot of the co2 that is dissolved in beer. The co2 helps suspend particulate and yeast contributing to cloudy beer.
I believe that when people secondary their beer, disturbing the beer during the transfer drives off this co2 and allows the beer to clear quicker. So why take your beer off the largest population of yeast (trub) and expose it to oxidation and contamination by transferring? The yeast are helping clean up and a swirl drives off the co2. :mrgreen:
When the yeast are finished they are able to drop out easily and if combined with gelatin and a cold crash, you can have remarkably clear beer without filtering.
Give it a try.
Brian

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I agree completely especially starting low around 62 then bring it up slowly to your ideal temp and raising a couple of degrees every day, on the 4 or 5th day raise to 70 and even 72 on the 6th, and after your big oxygen shake do a quick swirl or shake around day 2 then near the end

what that does is wakes up the lazy yeast and give you more chances of a full fermentation and if your set up is minimal keep it in the primary, let it chill and age to settle another week than normal and your good to go.
Gelatin can be a wast of time if not done right, I would read up on using it before hand

 

[EvanAltman36]

Excellent conversation, thanks. I use a paint strainer over a 5-gallon bucket to strain from kettle, but don't use a funnel filter. I cold crash for a couple days prior to kegging as well. I've not used gelatin, but sounds like that might be the way to go in the future.

So here's a question that arose from the talk of 5 and 1 micron filters and ending up with light beer. Commercially-brewed beers, even those will good flavor, have excellent clarity but I believe they all use filters. Do they simply brew a "heavier" beer so that it's still good after filtering?

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

yes I was told they do, it all depends on how well your barley (flavor) and sugar is bonded to water, a milky beer isn't necessarily a bad beer but has particles not bonded together at all. so when you filter your stripping those not bonded partials away, now they could be a good flavor or just trub and yeast so the only way to tell is to experiment with one beer type over and over

one thing to note that a 1 micron it also lowers the gravity and mouth feel so a once 15 can turn into a 10 finished gravity an a lower will be a watery mouth feel so the best way Ive found is less bitters in the beginning and carb higher than normal and the carbonation takes the place of the bitters and makes it more like a lager from a big brewery

 

[The Brew Mentor]

One thing I want to be clear on when I said to swirl the fermentor is that I'm not opening the fermentor at all. You don't want to add any oxygen at all to your wort/beer except when pitching yeast.
Brian

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

unless there is still positive pressure good point!

 

[Foster82]

.... commercial beer that has pristine clarity

Today I took a look at a commercial lite beer in a clear glass bottle and thought to myself "Beer should not be that clear" I mean it looked like someone put yellow food coloring into a bottle of water. I am now in the school of though that real beer should not have pristine clarity. I not throwing the clarifying methods out the door, but I kinda enjoy a slight haze, and a 5 to 1 micron filter is overboard in my book. A good hot break, a Whirlfloc tablet, cold crash and time; after all that if is still cloudy, so be it.