Filtering Stealing My Precious Hop Flavour

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Parks

wort jockey
Joined
24/9/07
Messages
1,929
Reaction score
658
Lately I have been adding more and more flavour hops into my Pale Ales to try to get a stronger hop flavour.

Well, I was kegging a double batch of an All Amarillo APA which I had all sorts of issues filtering. I normally end up crash chilling for up to a week on primary but I was in a hurry to get this one kegged so I crash chilled for 24 hours, polyclar'd and left for 12 hours then filtered. I had to wash the filter out twice but in the end I basically didn't filter the second keg.

I tasted the 2 kegs (now being an unwanted filtered vs non-filtered experiment) today and the hop flavour difference was unbelievable. Now that I have some kegs full I definitely think I'll be trying to clear my beers without the filter.

Time will tell how these 2 kegs mature but... anyway, I know some people have mentioned this before and others have said it was BS.

This is my story :)
 
Was this a 10um pleated filter? What were you filtering issues? What volume did you filter through as the first batch? What temperature was it at? What flow rate?
 
It's 1 micron absolute - pleated.
I filter keg-to-keg-backto-keg using 3 kegs for my 38L under CO2 at 0-1 degrees C. Normally this only requires 10-30kpa but even up to 80-100kpa wasn't getting through even after only the first 10L.

This filter has worked using this method for at least 10-15 double batches.

I'm wondering if it's pores are clogged or if I simply threw too much yeast and polyclar at it.

Also, the hop flavour thing I believe to always have been an issue (now tasting the flavour left in the unfiltered keg)
 
If you need more pressure, then it would probably just be yeast and protein material.

Have you shortened the dip tube on your first keg to reduce sediment pickup?

After getting similar results with a very hoppy beer using a larger filtration setup, I am going to just run my beers through 10 and 5 micron cartridges and bypass the smaller stuff.

I think you should look at another coarse filter stage prior to the 1 micron if you are going to try to push beers out quicker, or use time to do that for you.
 
If you need more pressure, then it would probably just be yeast and protein material.

Have you shortened the dip tube on your first keg to reduce sediment pickup?

After getting similar results with a very hoppy beer using a larger filtration setup, I am going to just run my beers through 10 and 5 micron cartridges and bypass the smaller stuff.

I think you should look at another coarse filter stage prior to the 1 micron if you are going to try to push beers out quicker, or use time to do that for you.

I don't leave my beer in the kegs, I pretty much just rack straight to keg and filter.

I think for 1 I'll have to be more patient with letting my beer sit at 0ish degrees for longer, which I normally do anyway. I'll also give the filter some extra love and cleaning.

And, I think it has set me up for doing half-half filtered/non-filtered into my kegs for a little while to get some more convincing results.

I may try to get a 5 micron filter next, but will see how my experiments go first :)
 
I don't leave my beer in the kegs, I pretty much just rack straight to keg and filter.

I think for 1 I'll have to be more patient with letting my beer sit at 0ish degrees for longer, which I normally do anyway. I'll also give the filter some extra love and cleaning.

And, I think it has set me up for doing half-half filtered/non-filtered into my kegs for a little while to get some more convincing results.

I may try to get a 5 micron filter next, but will see how my experiments go first :)

Hey man,

I also found that the 1 micron filters stripped malt and hop flavour and so after a few batches now intend on using my filter as a hopback. You can clear your beer well without filtering as stated above.

I will never filter a beer again and my taste buds will thank me.
 
So which one do you prefer? I've never filtered, just left it chilled for a few days before racking, sometimes if there's a large trub I might rack to secondary with some gelatine to help clear it up. I only use polyclar for the occassional lager to remove any chill haze. Even without any gelatine, at the end of the keg there's only a thin film of sludge of the bottom. What do you see as the benefit of filtering if you are able to allow sufficient time to chill?
 
So which one do you prefer? I've never filtered, just left it chilled for a few days before racking, sometimes if there's a large trub I might rack to secondary with some gelatine to help clear it up. I only use polyclar for the occassional lager to remove any chill haze. Even without any gelatine, at the end of the keg there's only a thin film of sludge of the bottom. What do you see as the benefit of filtering if you are able to allow sufficient time to chill?

Well, I was tasting the filtered one and it was exactly like my other brews... Then, I thought, I'll give the "probably sludgy" keg a taste and.... my eyes nearly popped out of my head with awesome hop flavour.

And really, I don't care that much if the clarity is perfect unless it's affecting the taste.

So, now it seems, the con's may outway the pro's. I will experiment more, me thinks :)
 
Doing away with filtering will mean not having to clean and sanitise the filter and you only need 2 kegs rather than 3. Just rack from primary after it's been chilled for a while and it's good to go. I can see filtering helping if you want a clear beer in the keg when it's not had enough time to clear by itself.
 
Doing away with filtering will mean not having to clean and sanitise the filter and you only need 2 kegs rather than 3. Just rack from primary after it's been chilled for a while and it's good to go. I can see filtering helping if you want a clear beer in the keg when it's not had enough time to clear by itself.

This is pretty much the conclusion I have come to. Amazing how it takes accident/emergency to find out these things some times...

Now I'll have to go back an re-evaluate my hop flavour additions in my recipes all over again, oh damn... :icon_cheers:
 

Latest posts

Back
Top