Filters: Canister vs. Plate

[LCBREW]

I've been brewing for a few years and kegging for most. I'm looking into gettting a filter for my brews. I know that the plate filter is a little more expensive, but thats fine by me. The canisters are supposed to be able to filter more than 5 gallon, I do 10 gallon batches so i'm leaning that way. any thoughts for someone who filters?
Cheers

[Kaiser]

Also consider the price of filter media. To take out proportion haze and get clear beer you'll need about 0.5 micron filter size.

Kai

[grod]

I have a canister one and have some issues with oxidation until I changed the way I use it. Make sure you also consider your filtering process.

Suck it!

love

g

[ajdelange]

I'd think long and hard before I invested money in a filter. There is no question that bright beer looks really nice in the glass and there is no question that you will have to wait a long time to get a clear Kölsch, for example, if you don't filter but what a PITA! I got a plate filter as part of a system and I have used it once. If you don't want your polish filter to load up 1/4 of the way through the batch you need to do coarse filtering first etc. I had previously fiddled with cartridge filters. Mess, expense, loss of carbonation and loss of beer were my main rewards (but the beer I got was beautiful). There is also some loss of flavor and mouthfeel as some protein globules get picked up.

Interestingly enough one of the things I found when I got religion on controlling mash pH was that my beers (lagers) dropped clear faster.

A final point - I want the beer going into my kegs to be a bit hazy. Having some yeast in there stabilizes the beer. I do big batches and often findmyself driking beers I brewed over a year prevous. The yeast on the bottom of the keg keep it stable that long.

[Kaiser]

My experiences are very much like A.J’s.

I built myself a canister beer filter since I was hoping to use off the shelf filter material and I needed to be able to filter carbonated beer. The filters I used were 1 um nominal (I.e. some stuff larger than 1 um will get through) spun filters. This filtered yeast, but in a beer, that has stubborn haze, yeast is generally not the issue. Chill haze and protein globules, that are smaller than 1 um, are the problem. As a result filtration gave me clearer but not brilliant beer. An option would have been to buy 0.5 um absolute filters, but at the time they were $15 at morebeer and that was a price point that didn’t work for me.

Another problem was that I was worried about oxidation and actually pushed boiled and then cooled water through the filter before I purged it with CO2. A lot of work to filter 1 to 2 kegs of beer.

Around the same time I made Pilsners that dropped clear after only 3 weeks in cold conditioning and I realized that I don’t need filtration to make clear lagers. I also made beers that would never drop clear despite protein rest and proper mash and boil pH. The haze came from protein globules and I blame that on the MO malt that I used.

Now the filter sits in a drawer stripped from its ball lock connectors.

When I’m in a rush to clear a beer these days I revert to gelatin. I works well if I can give it at least 3 days to settle the haze.

I know that there are a number of different opinions out there and I hope they chime in.
Recently I saw Tasty’s post in support of filtration.

Cheers,
Kai

[brewindruid]

Kai, first off, thanks for all the fantastic work and info you have offered out. Your papers and interviews are well done and easy to understand!
I had thought I heard Tasty mention, sometime around the begining of the summer that he was going off filtration and on to gelatin?
Could you go through the fining process you use with the gelatin. I mean, is it as simple as heat stir in gelatin pitch and chill?

Thnx
Scott

[Kaiser]

Thanks Scott,

To use gelatin I boil about a cup of water, cover it and let it cool to ~120-180F. Then I add 1/2 pack of unflavored gelatin and let it "bloom". With a sanitizes spoon or stirrer you can help getting it dissolved. It's also ok to heat it as long as it doesn't come to a boil. Once completely dissolved, add to beer, mix into beer and let the beer sit for a few days or longer.

Kai

[brewindruid]

let it sit at cellaring temps right around 40 or so?