Filtering - anyone do anything?

[MyQul]

Not for me! With a teabag, longer = stronger = harsher. For me, this is the perfect example of excessive tannin extraction. Difficult to do with a mash in my experience, so easy with tea (at least, with the English version of Indian tea in teabags Tetley, Yorkshire etc)

I've had no problems leaving my beer to mature with dry hops. But, I reckon do not leave it on a sediment that includes dead yeast for more than a week. In my experience, you will get off-flavours. Slight at first maybe. You might not notice them - but I rack my beer off any thick sediment & I'm certain the flavour is cleaner & better.

Oooh! now that's (racking to a secondary) a dark and twisty mine field with plently of conflicting opinions if you've a mind to google 'rack to secondary'

 

[MyQul]

So how (newb question alert), do the vast majority of beers sold in the supermarket get carbonated?

Force carbonation. Blast it with some C02 rather than let yeast chobble some priming sugar like we HBers do

 

[Hoppyland]

So how (newb question alert), do the vast majority of beers sold in the supermarket get carbonated?

Yes. Although all beer that has a sparkle gets carbonated - the only difference is how. There are only 2 basic processes:
1. "Natural" carbonation - where the beer continues fermenting in the bottle or cask, and the CO2 is produced by the yeast. The few supermarket bottled beers where this happens are labelled "bottle conditioned"
2. Forced injection of CO2 into the cask, bottle or can. This enables breweries to quickly produce clear yet sparkling beers. They can kill the yeast, filter the beer and then carbonate it to greatly shorten the maturation time.
Most supermarket beers will have been produced like this. The quality can still be very good, though!

 

[Hoppyland]

Oooh! now that's (racking to a secondary) a dark and twisty mine field with plently of conflicting opinions if you've a mind to google 'rack to secondary'

Yep. One of the great things about brewing is that there's plenty of different avenues to follow. Many of them will produce very good beer indeed!
But most methods will produce beer that is more than acceptable.
I guess its like painting, where everyone tends to develop their own style - but very slowly over time, after a lot of experimentation.
All part of the enjoyment - to try out different things, see what suits you! :)

 

[donchiquon]

I find dry hopping on day 7 and then moving to a cooler area (about 8 degrees in my garage) on day 13-15 produces a nice clear beer - all the hops drop to the bottom and act as a great filter!

This way the hops are only in for 8 days which seems about right!