Filtering - The Real Cost?

[kymba]

so you keep your filter in the housing full of sanitiser or in there after draining (damp with sanitiser)?

not being smart, but genuinely interested - what are the concerns with only hot water? my hot water brings the entire filter housing & cartridge up to and beyond the minimum temp required by the authorities for food preparation and service...if it is good for a pie, it is good for my beer

 

[Thirsty Boy]

so you keep your filter in the housing full of sanitiser or in there after draining (damp with sanitiser)?

not being smart, but genuinely interested - what are the concerns with only hot water? my hot water brings the entire filter housing & cartridge up to and beyond the minimum temp required by the authorities for food preparation and service...if it is good for a pie, it is good for my beer

If you keep your filter and cartridge at 80 for 10 or 15 minutes then i would consider that good enough, any less and i would consider it not properly sanitised. But thats what i think, for my brewery, if you think hot tap water is good enough and you haven't had any issues - i'm not telling you to do anything different.

As i said earier in the thread - i fill a keg completely with starsan, and push the whole keg of starsan through and out of the filter and housing with C02 - This completely displaces all the air in the keg, filter, housing and lines & sanitises them in the same step. Everything remains sealed, closed and under a little pressure for half an hour or so while i get my other shit together and this gives the filter cartridge enough time to drain a fair bit of residual sanitiser into the bottom of the housing - i flip it upside down and use the last of the pressure in the keg to blow it out the vent valve on the housing. If i get the filter ready the day before, the only thing that changes is the amount of time it has to drain... this changes the amount of liquid that comes out of it only minimally.

 

[Fourstar]

Not sure Nick, but we had a staff member here that we used to take the mick out of all the time because his filtered beers were always hazy.
He swore they were perfect the day before when first filtered. Watching his technique of flushing with Starsan & then straight into filtering, it was my guess that the starsan was reacting with the beer.

this was pretty much my process before my cartridge decided to fungus up soaking in nappisan whilst i was away in HKG and had the exact same results.

i would soak the cartridge in the housing whist i was prepping everything else. then force CO2 through the hosuing ensuring it was devoid of air and then filtering. The day of filtration, diamond bright. 1-2 days later, hazy. Hop hazy like.

I always assumed it was the star san and now i have some results whcih prove similiar to mine. Good to know. Got to get another cartridge again soon when i feel like burning 70 bucks on something non-essential*.

* i love filtering and it threw my process out for a while not using one. If i still had a functional cartiridge i can assure you i would be filtering 90% of my beers still.

 

[Nick JD]

* i love filtering

I love filtered beer. I don't love filtering.

 

[sama]

Cheers Ross

I personally let the cartridge dry over night before filtering - Try weiging one dry & then wet, you'lll be surprised how much liquid they hold.

Thats interesting,dosent this sort of negate the sanitising process,surely overnight stuff would be breeding in the thing? Do most people rinse with starsan and use not long after?

 

[Cocko]

Thats interesting,dosent this sort of negate the sanitising process,surely overnight stuff would be breeding in the thing? Do most people rinse with starsan and use not long after?

For the last 3 years I have used proxitane, with out a fault - great product. Went back to get more and the store is now only selling it in cubes, which would probably last this whole forum a few years...

Anyways, I went with some starsan from Ross with all the hype I have read from this forum. Last week I used it to do my filter for the first time, also note it was a brand new cartridge from Ross on the same order, so I usually just let it drip dry for about an hour and shake the crap hole out if..... Did this, and filtered.

Expecting a crystal result, as always and a brand new cartridge, First pour I find its hazy WTF! Then read Ross' post in this thread and think hmm.....

I blame the starsan but very rarely get chill haze... will let a beer warm up and report back!

Cheers

 

[Fourstar]

I love filtered beer. I don't love filtering.

Correction, I love the results filtering gives.

One of the first few things we agree on Nick.

 

[spudfarmerboy]

Not sure Nick, but we had a staff member here that we used to take the mick out of all the time because his filtered beers were always hazy.
He swore they were perfect the day before when first filtered. Watching his technique of flushing with Starsan & then straight into filtering, it was my guess that the starsan was reacting with the beer.
We than filtered after giving the cartridges a rinse in water & the problem was resolved.

Cheers Ross

I personally let the cartridge dry over night before filtering - Try weiging one dry & then wet, you'lll be surprised how much liquid they hold.

Ross,
How do you sanitise the filter, with Starsan? If you leave it to dry overnight, do you keep it in the fridge?
Cheers

 

[Ross]

I sanitise with Starsan the night before & leave it on the drainer with the housing over it to keep off any bugs.

cheers Ross

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Bugs, or at least the germ type ones, do not fly, they fall - usually on dust. if you make something sanitary, then to all intents and purposes, it will stay that way indefinitely if you cover it up in a fashion that would stop it getting dusty.

fourstar - filter with a little mould on it.... soak in bleach and rinse well. No more problem and dont leave it in the nappisan so long next time.

 

[Batz]

As i said earier in the thread - i fill a keg completely with starsan, and push the whole keg of starsan through and out of the filter and housing with C02 - This completely displaces all the air in the keg, filter, housing and lines & sanitises them in the same step. Everything remains sealed, closed and under a little pressure for half an hour or so while i get my other shit together and this gives the filter cartridge enough time to drain a fair bit of residual sanitiser into the bottom of the housing - i flip it upside down and use the last of the pressure in the keg to blow it out the vent valve on the housing. If i get the filter ready the day before, the only thing that changes is the amount of time it has to drain... this changes the amount of liquid that comes out of it only minimally.

Very similar as my process, I only use perhaps a quarter of a keg and I sanitize with phosphoric acid not starsan. I have never had it produce a hazy beer and I have never rinsed or dried the filter either, doing that somehow seems to defeat the purpose to me.

Batz

 

[Fourstar]

fourstar - filter with a little mould on it.... soak in bleach and rinse well. No more problem and dont leave it in the nappisan so long next time.

This was the issue where i got some odour taint as well (i PM'd you about it) and tried the whole acid/alkaline thing with little success. I just decided to turf it than risk infecting x amount of batches.

Blowing 70 bucks on a replacement for me is a hell of a lot easier to swallow than the idea of having wasted two whole days brewing then fermenting and filtering to find out a few days down the track the beers have picked up some taint from the filter i KNEW was dodgy.

 

[argon]

I think that's the only drawback to the filter in my mind... just not sure what the effects are of this bubbling that people experience. The brain says oxidation, but experience has told me that there's no ill effects.


When i begin filtering i keep it in the upright position with the purge valve depressed to let the purged Co2 out. Then once full and purged i invert to allow the beer to flow and allowing any Co2 that comes out of solution to gather at the top of the housing. Maybe next time i try filtering (this weekend probably)i'll try holding the housing horizontally with the beer in at the top and the beer out at the bottom. That way when the air starts coming it will be above the beer going out??? dunno... worth a try maybe.

Filtered a double batch of IPA last night and tried holding the housing horizontal as described above... worked a treat. No bubbling. The air was still entering the housing. It was just entering it above the line of the beer, hence not bubbling through. So hopefully the potential for oxidation was minimized.

Also keeping it on topic, i filtered pretty much through the trub/yeast cake, picking up another 1.5-2L by my measurements. Fermenters had 41L in there and now i have 19L in one keg and as much as it takes to overflow the second... close to 20L once weighed. So probably only lost about 1-1.5L to trub. When i don't filter i would expect a 2L loss from each fermenter.

So i guess the premise that filtering does save money by allowing greater volume/packaging efficiency has held true in my case.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

This was the issue where i got some odour taint as well (i PM'd you about it) and tried the whole acid/alkaline thing with little success. I just decided to turf it than risk infecting x amount of batches.

Blowing 70 bucks on a replacement for me is a hell of a lot easier to swallow than the idea of having wasted two whole days brewing then fermenting and filtering to find out a few days down the track the beers have picked up some taint from the filter i KNEW was dodgy.

remember now - yeah, you gave it the treatment.

 

[Brewman_]

I sanitise with Starsan the night before & leave it on the drainer with the housing over it to keep off any bugs.

cheers Ross

I have noticed that a wet filter cartridge can hold a lot of sanitiser, so the first runnings thorugh the filter will have quite a bit of sanitiser.


Just wondering whether anyone fast rinses the sanitised cartridge with hot > 80Deg.C water or even almost boiling water prior to filtering just to remove any residual sanitiser?


Fear_n_Loath

 

[Nick JD]

I flush mine with hot tap water. My 12mm lines fit my laundry sink - so it's a few liters of piping hot through the IN, then I turn the filter and put a few liters through the OUT to back flush. I soak in Starsan for an overkill half hour.

Not sure if anything over 85C is good for the filter.

To clean I back flush with cold tap water for about 10L, then flush with the same - then open up and add a tablespoon of napisan and leave the lid on upside down to keep the cartridge submerged for 2 days. Then I flush the napisan until the runnings are no longer "greasy", flick as much water out as I can and then leave it out to dry.

But usually I just add finings to secondary as it's MUCH easier. The filter is great when you're in a hurry to get the beer served.

 

[Brewman_]

But usually I just add finings to secondary as it's MUCH easier. The filter is great when you're in a hurry to get the beer served.

I do much the same, except the hot water flush of the filter but I think that's a good idea, will do that next time.

On the finings: I have recently returned to using finings after many years. I am finding the results using finings very good. I am using finings in the primary, leaving to settle for two days, sometimes with low temps, sometimes not depending on the beer and then keg. Once I crack the keg it is fairly cloudy, but after about a third of the keg, I would say that the beer is very clear and almost filter bright. The filter gets some use, but not as much as it used to.

Fear_n_loath

 

[KillerRx4]

I dump the 1st litre or so of beer passed through the filter. A quick check with a refractometer will show how diluted it is with sanitiser or whatever the cartridge is wet with.

 

[Steve@PMF82]

You can keg very clear beer from primary, just takes some time, sometimes gelatine and polyclar and some cold conditioning.
Siphon from the top and you have clear beer in your keg, not hard at all.

While this is true i am very happy with my clarity. This thread and recent events, such as me having to move my kegs around briefly - stiring up the stuff that had settled to the bottom
after a couple of weeks in the fridge, resulting in a few glasses of sub tasting beer and a couple of days to settle down again.
So all is well if i dont ever have to move the keg :angry:

Anyway got some xmas money and bought a filter, will only be using it on the kegged beer, very happy with how my bottles turn out

So 1 micron absolute it is, hopefully it makes for a more stable keg of beer.

Dam cheap beer! thats it this time! im not buying anything else so in the next 6months i will have cheap beer again

 

[jbowers]

While this is true i am very happy with my clarity. This thread and recent events, such as me having to move my kegs around briefly - stiring up the stuff that had settled to the bottom
after a couple of weeks in the fridge, resulting in a few glasses of sub tasting beer and a couple of days to settle down again.
So all is well if i dont ever have to move the keg :angry:

Anyway got some xmas money and bought a filter, will only be using it on the kegged beer, very happy with how my bottles turn out

So 1 micron absolute it is, hopefully it makes for a more stable keg of beer.

Dam cheap beer! thats it this time! im not buying anything else so in the next 6months i will have cheap beer again

Thats my favourite part of filtering. The beer will be good from the get go, and moving it around wont make it trubby again.