one micron stainless steel beer filter

[chub1]

I stick my hops in either a hop bag or a tea infuser. When racking i put some voil over the end of the syphon which is basically very fine net curtain,nicked from the wife's stock:mrgreen: boil it along with an elastic band and use that over the end of the syphon. 99% of the time it's fine,have had it clog a tad once or twice which will restrict the flow a bit.

 

[Simonh82]

The one time I put the bag on the inlet it stopped flowing after about five litres. I had to keep pumping it, the hose was flying around everywhere and the batch got dumped a few weeks later due to oxygenation.

I think I'll try putting the hops in a bag and see how it goes, they do tend to float on top even after a stir.

Are you starting off with the end of the syphon near the bottom of the fermentor? I start mine off near the top and slowly lower it down as the level descends. That way it only spends a short time near the crud at the bottom. I've never had a problem with the syphon blocking and I often dry hop with ~150g of hops.

I have had issues with my bottling wand blocking with pellet hop particles but that is easily fixed by closing the tap and disassembling the springy bit at the end of the wand and refixing it.

 

[Ciaran12s]

Yeah I was starting at the top and moving down. It may be the size of the nylon bag being quite small. (It came with a festival ipa kit)

I've ordered some muslin bags anyway. so whether the hops are put in there, or the bag is tied round the inlet or outlet is yet to be decided. I'd imagine whatever I do I'll end up regretting it haha

 

[Druncan]

For dry hopping I use a 150mm bag for pellets and hops (<100g) with marbles! Generally my beers are cold crashed for 24hrs 2-6*C prior to kegging and it all works. However, i'm such a hop head I then wring the fek out of the bag to get every drop of aroma and flavour. I can get an extra 1/2pt of my beer!!! but it does add T90 pellet debris that clouds the brews.
My trub is jellied at the bottom but the bag does pick up a bit.

So I went ahead and ordered the filter

Will report back if I re-decorate the kitchen with atomised beer,,, Mmmmm, is that essence of IPA and cascade, you're wearing tonight darling?

 

[terrym]

If you use a small nylon mesh sock over the internal end of the siphon tube like I do (from a Festival kit) but have lots of hop bits floating about in your brew then it is indeed possible that the mesh may block up.
But that can be avoided by leaving the hops to settle by gravity, time, and perhaps crash cooling at the end of the dry hop, or any or all of those. Which is what I do, and even though I always have the end of the tube at or near the FV bottom I have never had a problem of the mesh blocking up, since the hops are settled at the bottom.
And a tip to help get hop bits to settle out is to give the side of the FV a few gentle knocks at the liquid interface from time to time so that the liquid surface vibrates a little which will encourage any floating hops to drop.

 

[Ciaran12s]

Thanks for all the advice (and sorry for hijacking your thread @druncan I hope your new toy works out well for ye!)

I have no cold crashing capability atm so that's out the window. Hitting the fermenter a whack is certainly worth a try, but "they" say you shouldn't dry hop too long before bottling so I aim for 4/5 days.

I think I'll try dry hopping loose with one of these muslin bags round the outlet when racking, then take it from there depending on performance.

 

[terrym]

I think I'll try dry hopping loose with one of these muslin bags round the outlet when racking, then take it from there depending on performance.

Nylon mesh is better than muslin, because it doesn't absorb liquid, and therefore drains better, and doesn't become a soggy lump at the end of emptying the FV. They also clean easier
I abandoned muslin bags in favour of nylon and wouldn't go back.

 

[BeerCat]

I saw a review of this on youtube where the guy did a closed transfer keg to keg through the filter and the beer was exactly the same afterwards. Took him over an hour so he did not rush it. I used to think commercial breweries filtered their beer but perhaps they use other methods.

 

[Clint]

Not sure if some use a centrifuge. ....

 

[Fil]

buy one of those and have LOTS of issues imho.. some time ago i thought it might be a plan to try and filter a beer using 2 x 10" filters and 2 x spun nylon filters 1 x 5 micron and 1 x 1 micron. thinking it would be worth the cost of 2 x filters for a batch of 4-5 kegs if the result was commercial bottle clarity beer in the keg meaning zero settle time when tapping.

However things didnt quite go as planned and i made the worst mistake initially by doing the transfer in gravel trays in the newly decorated front bedroom ;( not outside DOH!!

with 2 kegs and 2 filters inbetween them i made the beer connections and allowed the empty keg and full keg reach a pressure balance and stand for 10 mins before venting off any captured air thru the filter housing vents.

Once the filters were flushed out, i connected a spare gas disconnect to the empty keg to vent and cracked the valve open on the reg setting the pressure at circa 5psi to start with and the beer started to flow visibly thru the filter system,

LOOP:
However it soon slowed so i pumped up the pressure a tad..
UNTIL PRESSURE = circa 60 psi

At about 60 psi the seals on the filter housings started to give releasing a mist of atomised beer, in no time at all the room was obscured in beer fog as i scrambled to shut off the co2 and vent the feeder keg.

The net result was the beer mist permeated every porus surface in the room, bedding, curtains, new bloody wall paper and carpet All Stank of stale beer within a week ;(

what might seem like a good idea could result in LOTS of trouble....

If you do decide to make an investment, PLEASE TEST OUTSIDE!!!!!!!

 

[peebee]

... I used to think commercial breweries filtered their beer but perhaps they use other methods.

Time is money. If you are a brewer that will mean squeezing out anything remotely haze forming to get beer out of the gate as soon as possible. And to hell with the quality...

Yes, some commercial breweries did filter their beer, and some still do. Filtering might not damage the beer (probably will), but doing it is a good indicator of far more nefarious practices going on to produce the so-called "beer".

As a contract draughtsman back in the year dot I was once tasked to draw the filtering machinery. It was massive. It did use pressure, but not gas pressure behind the beer. The machine was called a "filter press" (look them up on Google or the like). Beer was pumped into "cells" between plates, the plates were closed together and the machine did its thing. If I remember rightly bladders next to the cells were pumped full of liquid (water?) at very high pressure and this did the squeezing. The "cake" left in the machine after the beer was gone was pretty well dry. They are used in an industry related to what these beer produces were doing: Sewerage.

 

[scomet]

Hello Druncan

I (now) filter all my beer it has lots of benefits imho the first of which it speeds up the maturation process. I use a standard 1 micron American filter, sanitation has to be at 150% its a bit time consuming but dead yeast has no place in finished beer. The beer may still be cloudy (usually isn’t) keg n force C02


I think that steel job would be a Bitch to clean and I liked this bit in the advertising twaddle “”As a bonus, forcing your beer through the filter under CO2 pressure helps begin its dissolution into the beer”” I’d gravity feed thro’ a standard filter and leave the dissolutions up to the ……..