[krotchrott]

Filter Project

Well, I decided my next brewing project would be to construct a filter for when I'm transferring the beer from the fermenter to the keg before carbonation.

I went to home depot and purchaced a water filter with a 5 micron rating. I've seen places that sell filters that go as low as 0.5 to 1, but they are $$. So, i figured, "What the heck. Lets see what the 5 micron does. If I have to buy the smaller ones, I will."

Here are pics from the project.





 
I connected the filter housing between an uncarbonated keg full of beer and an empty one and set the regulator to 10 PSI to push the beer through the filter... This much pressure I learned was not needed...  A low 2-3 PSI should be plenty to get the beer moving. You could even gravity feed it if you wanted as I found the filter doesn't really give resistance at all.

The filter filling.




Here goes the real test! This is a West Coast IPA that was dryhopped with 3 ounces of hop pellets. It is weighing in at 93 IBU's (International Bittering Units)!

Pint glass of the unfiltered beer. You cannot see through it.


Pint glass of the filtered beer. You can clearly see my fingers on the other side of the glass.


SUCCESS !!!

NOW TO GET REALLY WILD WITH IT!!!

Extreme Hop Bomb.

After constructing the filter for clearing my home brew on it's way to the kegs, I began to see many more potential usages for it in brewing than just a clarifier. I thought why not fill it full of hops and use it as a hopback? When I presented the idea to my good buddy Greg, he commented, "Why just a hopback? How about filling it full of hops and running the strike water through it. Or, how about the wort running out of the mash, etc..."

Brilliant!

Thus, the idea for brewing an extreme hop bomb, using the filter packed with hops in every aspect of the brew day, was born.

Hop shortage? We don't care about no stinkin' hop shortage. This brew used 3 lbs of hops for 20 gallons!

Filling the filter full of hops





We wanted to maximize the amount of hops we could use. So in lieu of a standard filter inside the filter housing, we found a simple coffee filter would keep the hops from clogging everything up.





Oh Yeah! That's a lot of Cascade Hops!



Strike water running through the hops.



It actually turned the strike water GREEN!
Just to be a little more ridiculous, we threw a handful of hops into the mash tun as well.



Mashed around 60 pounds of malt in the hop tea goodness.



After 90 minutes, we drained the hoppy wort out of the mash tun back through the filter filled with a fresh round of Palisade hops.



What a pretty color this one is.



After boiling the collected wort for 60 minutes and adding more hops along the way, the brew gets run through the filter packed fresh with Centennial Hops yet one more time on it's way to the fermenters!



The calculated gravity on this beer is around 1.080. If it ferments down like we are hoping, that gravity should put the beer at an estimated 9% ABV!
We were pleasantly surprised to find the samplings of the wort from the hydrometer runnings were remarkably smooth.


The fermented beer finished out at 1.016 and was nothing short of Fantastic!!! 
Big. Smooth.
And well,... Hoppy

Cheers,
KrOtChRoTT

[tomthebrewer]

Wow, that is a lot of hopping! I wonder if your idea of running the mash run-off through the filter contributes much of anything different from FWH?

[rabid_dingo]

Questions, the tub with the wort in it. What part of the process are you in? and how does using the rubbermaid tub help. Is it because of the size of your batch?

[smurfe]

Wow, great inspiration. I have one of those filter systems laying around and 3 pounds of Cascade's in the freezer I need to use up. Looks like some McGyver tactics are in the process here to. Great post!

[krotchrott]

Questions, the tub with the wort in it. What part of the process are you in? and how does using the rubbermaid tub help. Is it because of the size of your batch?

The stage we are in is the collection of wort from the mashtun.
And, you are correct. We only used the rubbermaid because of the great volume we collected: 20+ gallons which we split into two 10 gallon batches of equal SG.

[rabid_dingo]

Gotcha! I have one of them home filters, Still in the box. Never been used. I may have to start playing with it. Thanks for the inspiration.

[dean]

Nothing to do with the subject, but I thought the OP's name was funny, when I was a kid we had a friend we nicknamed "rottencrotch".   

[mikeypedersen]

Nice!  You fuys should put that after the keg and before the tap on your serving line, filled with fresh hops, kind-of like Dog-Fish Head's Randall.