Beer Forum

Has anyone filtered a beer that is already chilled and carbonated?

I have a Kolsch that keeps picking up a lot of yeast of the bottom of the keg.
I was thinking about filtering this.

If I don't filter can I add finings to a beer that is already carbonated?

Cheers


Brendan

You could fine it, and then transfer to another keg after a few days.

I think on BrewStrong they cover filtering carb'ed beer. If I recall. I wouldn't know otherwise on the homebrew end!

I've tried several times to filter carbonated beer and been sad at the end of it each time. Theoretically you should be able to chill the carbonated beer to below the temperature needed for the volume of CO2 you want at 8psi (just below the the limit of the common homebrew plate filters), set the sending keg to 10psi, the receiving keg to 8psi and filter without foam. It does not work for me. If I decide I need to filter beer that is already carbonated, I degas it over several days, then filter, then recarbonate.

DannyW wrote:I've tried several times to filter carbonated beer and been sad at the end of it each time. Theoretically you should be able to chill the carbonated beer to below the temperature needed for the volume of CO2 you want at 8psi (just below the the limit of the common homebrew plate filters), set the sending keg to 10psi, the receiving keg to 8psi and filter without foam. It does not work for me. If I decide I need to filter beer that is already carbonated, I degas it over several days, then filter, then recarbonate.

Word... tried that shit last night. Gave up after a quart of foam went to my receiving keg. Degas and filter it flat.


Mylo

pressures too low

you get the beer colder than the temp you carbonated it at, then you get the pressure higher than you carbonated it at - and you make sure that it stays this way throughout the whole process. Then the only thing that ca happen is that extra gas is forced into the beer, not that it will come out of the beer and cause foaming.

Beer containing keg as cold as you can get it (keep it off the gas when chilling it)
Put the receiving keg in the same fridge so its cold
Put the filter itself in the freezer to get cold
Attach the receiving keg to to your gas at a couple of psi higher than the carbonation pressure you used, attach the filter to the liquid out post & bleed some gas through it to purge 02, then let it all settle for a minute so the keg and the filter are all sitting at the same higher pressure.
Disconnect the gas from the receiving keg and without changing the pressure, connect it to the full keg's gas post so the full keg, empty keg and filter are all at the same pressure
Now connect the filter to the liquid out post of the full keg - pretty much nothing should happen
Slowly and carefully bleed gas from the receiving keg and as you do so beer will flow
If you get a little foam - you will as things warm up - turn up the pressure a little and slow down the rate at which you bleed the gas. Think of it as a great big counter pressure bottle filler.

And that should work, or at least it has for me a couple of times.

Note - I use a canister type filter that can take the higher pressure, this is one of the reasons I chose this sort of filter over the plate filters. If you have a plat type filter, I guess you'll just have to reduce the carbonation of your beer, although you wont have to let it go completely flat.