Filtered beer with el cheapo wine filter

[fakr]

Thought I'd share my experience filtering beer with the cheapest filter I could find.
Got the filter at wine kits with a pack of #2 filters.  The filter was cheap enough that if it didn't work, I would just throw it out.

The filter works by pressurizing the carboy with a dinky little pump which forces beer up a siphon hose and through the filter.

First attempt was with a stout (yeah yeah, why would you filter stout) to see how the filter performed.  After over an hour of waiting, I realized a back pressure of 2psi was much too little to run beer through the filter in a timely fashion.

So last night was my second attempt, only this time I put ball lock liquid fittings on either end of the filter system, and used CO2 back pressure to transfer from one keg to another.

Well, I filtered 10GAL with two filters in about 15 minutes.  Not bad.  
I then filled a 1L PET bottle, chilled it, and forced carbed it with a pressure cap.

The beer looks great, and tastes great too.   The other 2GAL of this 12 GAL batch went into a third keg, unfiltered, for comparison later on.

Here are a few pics:

[attachment=1:2yfbzlwg]filter.JPG[/attachment:2yfbzlwg]
[attachment=0:2yfbzlwg]Filtered Beer.JPG[/attachment:2yfbzlwg]

[HappyHax0r]

Ok, that's sad. I look at this picture and the first thing I see is the multimeter and think "Jees, is that a fluke?"

Then I see the beer.

I am broken and am a sad, sad individual.

[JohnQ]

"Jees, is that a fluke?"

That is forgivable actually, they make such good stuff.

JQ

[HappyHax0r]

"Jees, is that a fluke?"

That is forgivable actually, they make such good stuff.

JQ

I know, I have one .

[Richard]

Couple of things:

1. If and when you filter an IPA, let me know what the effect is on dry-hop aroma. I suspect it would be rather bad, but I've yet to confirm this.
2. Do you find that your filter oxidises the product at all? It'd be noticeable in a light beer like that one there. This was one of my main concerns overall with filtering using a wine gizmo.

[brew]

I wonder if would be possible to run a little CO2 through the filter first to reduce risk of oxygen getting at the beer?

[fakr]

lol! no, it's not a fluke, but good job for picking up on it being a multimeter!

Richard, I have the same concern with IPAs and I will definitely test.  Being that I make 10-12GAL batches at a time, I am going to filter only one keg out of two with future batches until I can confirm or deny the filter's effect on the overall taste, as well as life expecency.

I should add that part of the procedure I used is the same as what I was taught with wine filtering.  Run a good amount of sanitizer through the filter before filtering your beer or wine.  

I pushed 1 GAL or starsan through the filter (from the receiving keg, to empty it of starsan), then hooked up the full unfiltered keg and hit it with 7psi of CO2, hooking up the filter to an empty dirty keg to transfer.  Once I saw beer intering the keg, I disconnected the fitting and attached it to the empty, santized keg.

That's about it.  Very minimal air bubbles.  Again though, I'm of the same train of thought so I have 2GAL of unfiltered beer in a third keg for comparison.

[fakr]

Wanted to update this thread on the filtered vs unfiltered versions of this beer.

The filtered beer was nice and clear but formed a slight chill hase over time.   No signs of oxidization from the filtering.

The unfiltered beer tastes the same though the mouth feel is slightly more full.  No difference in hop or malt profiles that I could tell anyway.

Is it worth the process?  Not sure, but I'll do it again for comparison.

I did use this filter on some stout I bottled and I found it took away from the mouthfeel compared to the unfiltered kegged version.  I will not use the filter for dark beers again.

[fakr]

I was looking through some of my posts and saw this one.

Update:  I threw that shitty filter away ages ago.  WAAAAY too much hastle for what it's worth.  Maybe for small batches of wine, but not for beer.
When you go el cheapo, you get el cheapo.