Filter between kettle and plate chiller

[DaaB]

By it's nature a filter has a large surface area full of thousands (millions?) of holes in which particulate and bacteria can hide, inaccessible to any sort of mechanical removal.

[J.Brew]

I don't quite understand how you guys think that this is an infection risk??

It will of course be sanitised and its on the hot side of the equation.. before the chiller. I cant see how it could be any more of an infection risk than a hop back would be... and in fact by stuffing some hops in there would serve quite nicely AS a hopback, and I could use pellets in it instead of flowers, which I generally don't use.

J.brew ... whirpooling is a mysterious process that other people make work, in my system all it achieves is extra time and effort wasted. I usually just let the trub settle to the bottom without a whirpool... If I do whirlpool.. it seems to make no difference at all.

I am as I said before, unconcerned about cold break, but I want to get more of the wort lost to trub, into the fermentor and keep hot break and hops out of the fermentor.

I currently use a hop bag for my pellets... and I dont particularly like it, but if I dont use it I lose even more wort to trub.

The filter will cost me only $19.00, is sanitizable enough so that I use the same type without concern to filter finished beer & will be on the hotside of the chiller anyway and should allow me to go back to using pellets directly in the boil... all while simultaneously more than halving my losses to trub and saving the 30mins settling time

I think thats covered the issues raised so far (to my satisfaction at least) anyone have any others?? I'll probably go ahead and try it anyway, but I'm interested to hear more of what people think.

Thanks

Thirsty

O.K...understood. I think I was a bit confused as to the purpose. And your right, I'd think that as long as you sanitize the filter and housing, and run hot wort through it on the way to the chiller it is not much different than a bazooka or any other straining device. I thought your problem was with a bit of cold break in the fermenter. Unless your brewing lagers I didn't see how a small amount in the fermenter was a big deal...my bad.

However, the pump impeller pulverizes all the hotbreak into smaller chunks that don't settle out as easily.

You know I have this problem sometimes when just stiring with a spoon to whirlpool. I chill the wort and get a good break, remove the chiller, move the kettle to a workbench, stir with a spoon, and then the break "breaks up" and takes forever to settle. I've tried to whirlpool with the chiller in place without much luck. Any body got any suggestions that don't require a pump?

[Thirsty Boy]

Maybe the whole kettle could be put on a turntable and spun up... no spoons, no pumps and it would be a really cool if somewhat silly brewing gadget.

No bad from you J.Brew, we all get a bit carried away with ideas and just having someone say "hang on.. why do you even want to do that" can often save a lot of time and effort. Your (and every one elses) comments made me stop and think about what I was about to do and wonder if it was worth the bother. Just the opposite of bad

Thanks everyone

Thirsty

[TMB]

Just my $0.02 on the filter idea. First, I would think that it would clog very quickly. Pleated filters won't deal well with all the crud that you're trying to filer out (take your shop vac for example). For your first try at this, I would recommend adding a bypass line so that if it does clog you can bypass it without having to take it apart. I imagine myself not thinking about the bypass then swearing a lot as I took it apart and started worrying about the loss of sanitation. Also, I imagine that you're running a pump because there is no way that gravity will move more than a gallon through this before it slows to a trickle.

I currently use a bazooka "filter" and started recirculating through my CF chiller using a March pump to drive it (sounds like the same general setup as MyloFiore). I recirculate my wort through the CF enough to get the bulk temp down to 80-100 F and then I stop recirculating and go into the carboys (10 gallon batches) while still going through the CF chiller. I find that by doing this I get cooler wort in the carboys and I actually filter out almost all of the hot & cold break.

With that said, I fight the bazooka filter clogging. Back in the day, like a few months ago, when whole hops were available I used whole hops because the hop cones would actually make a very nice filter bed. Unfortunately I learned about recirculating after the hop shortage so I have yet to try the recirculation method with whole hops.

It actually gets me thinking about the mash tun. The grain bed makes a nice high capacity filter (like the hop cones) because it's very 3D with a lot of pathways that have to clog before it becomes stuck. I’m personally thinking about getting two bazooka filters and setting them up with a T so they are against the sides of the kettle and then adding a ring (I saw a nice copper circle in the brewing gadgets thread) for the whirlpool. Again, I run the same general setup as MyloFiore so I expect that my minimal swirling of the wort won’t do much for whirlpool effect, so I would still need an immersion chiller (more $$). Back to the grain bed. I wonder if it would be possible to add a bunch of something bulky at the end of the boil to create a filter bed. My first thought is rice hulls. The obvious problem is either sanitation if added at a low temp or tannins if added at a high temp.

Just a few more thoughts for ya.

Cheers

[Thirsty Boy]

TMB - Thanks for that. I will now definately have it set up with either a bypass line, or so the filter cam be taken out of the equation with minimal effort and fuss. I will be using a pump, but I honestly dont expect it to clog. My experience with these pleated filters so far is using them to filter finished beer, and I filter pretty much all of my beer.

I filter under gravity only (down a flight of stairs) and I am able to filter two fermentors worth of beer including more than 50% of the yeast cake from each ferementor. My fermentors have taps at teh bottom, and I tip them on thier sides to get out as much as I can, I only disonnect the filter when the beer/teast becomes so thick it wont flow out of the ferementor anymore. But the filter doesn't clog.

Last beer I filtered, I had to scrape the filter cartridge out with a spoon it was so thick in there, bu the flw rate through the filter was till not too bad.

Now break material is a different animal to yeast, so it might clog hte damn thing really fast, so I am definately taking your advice, but I am quietly confident.

What about a steel wool as a complex path filter??

Thirsty

[TMB]

Good idea, but standard steel wool is full of oil and will rust. The stainless scrubbies might work, just wondering about cleaning them.

[Brandt]

I use a stainless scrubbie which gets rubber banded to the end of a SS 1/2" racking cane. I use the assembly as a pickup tube. It does filter out pellet hops remarkably well and to sanitize it, al I have to do is throw it into the kettle in the last 10 minutes, attach my silicone hose which goes to my pump, and away we go. I'm not that worried about a thorough cleaning afterward. I just get as much of the crud out as I can.

[Ozbrewer]

i would be worried about the heat and the plastic?, apart from that i would prefer to se filtering at the end, after fermentation if you really need to...


Thirsty, if your having problems whirl pooling give me a cal and we can go thought it, maybe your missing something