Stabilization of filtered beer

[Fred Scheer]

HI:

I saw that NEVER in the thread, so - lets change it.....

I'm wondering what Craft Brewers do to quaranty the wholesalers
-X- amount of shelflife?
Do you stabilize before, during or after filtration?
What are you using and the amount?

Without giving away any secrets, please let us know.
\

Cheers
Fred

[gabewilson50]

Do you stabilize before, during or after filtration?
What are you using and the amount?

Which filtration? I assume you were talking about the primary filtration into your brite tank, but using a 0.45 micron cartridge filter right before bottling is one way to help eliminate any spoilage microorganisms. Then your only problem should be making sure you have as low O2 in your bottles. Get that under control and you can get great shelf life from your bottles.

Cheers!

--Gabe

[mariposabrewing]

does this slow down bottles per minute? Say on a merlin?

[Geoff Logan]

Yes

In my experience, yes it does affect the Merlin. The pressures required for my filter were too much for the Maheen to handle. So, I have to do secondary filtration to the BT.

Geoff Logan
Head Brewer
AleWerks

[TL Services]

In addition to micro spoilage - which 0.45um filtration will remove - you also need to consider the formation of age-related haze.

This is a protein-polyphenol complex that, given the right (or wrong, to be more accurate!) conditions, can form with time. Primary factors are:

High levels of 'sensitive' proteins from wort - check raw materials (malt) & make sure you have effective copper finings;

High polyphenol levels - check raw materials (hops) and make sure you're not over-sparging;

Maturation - good, cold maturation (0 deg C, 32 deg F) will help to de-solubilise the haze components;

Oxygen - a tight control on O2 after fermentation as the formation of a protein-polyphenol complex is catalysed by O2.

It is possible to add PVPP (if allowed?) to your filter medium to reduce polyphenol levels or in some cases I have known brewers use papain during maturation to remove protein.

The latter, however, is very much a last-ditch remedy as it has dire consequences for head-retention

[dick murton]

Hmm Don't know about dire consequences. If the consequnces were that bad, absolutely no-one would use it. But you are right that for some people / some beers it does appear to afect head retention. If the beer is pasteurised it will have a lesser effect than if it is not pasteurised, and so I expect this is at least part of the answer.

Even if you adhere to the Reinheitsgebot, you can use PVPP & silica gel as they do not dissolve in the ber. However, papain is definitely out. The biggest problem with PVPP is the sheer cost of the stuff, allied to the wetting / swelling time required, and the tendency to blind filters at high dosage rates

[TL Services]

I recall doing some trials a few years ago using papain as the brewery in question had a major problem with new-season's malt which was causing very bad haze stability on ageing.

Addition caused anything up to a 50% reduction in head retention, depending on rate/duration of contact.

This may have been partly as a result of the beer itself, which was brewed as a high-malt product and was also high abv (~9%) so the concentration of sensitive proteins was proportionally high, but the net result was definitely noticeable on pouring as well as from analytical data.

I quite agree PVPP is costly, but can be regenerated effectively with NaOH to reduce the financial burden.

However, I'm sure that's all getting well away from the original posting, so I'll be quiet

[TNbrewer]

Hey Fred,

I assume you are talking about non-micro haze stabilization. For craft beer I would be hesitant to use a .45 micron filter for most brands. In a contract bottling situation I was in, we noticed substantial flavor stripping with this method. I would rather go to great lengths to ensure clean beer in the bottle and skip the sterile filtration.

As for non-biological haze:
We have used both PVPP (for polyphenol removal) and amorphous silica zerogel (for protein removal) separately with success. We noticed after switching from DE to Perlite, that Perlite is not quite as adsorptive, and were getting some haze on our lightest beer at accounts that served "the Coldest Beer in Town!" Both work fine. PVPP was considerably more expensive and required longer hydration and contact times. We used both in the filter, dosed in with Perlite, so the short contact time means higher usage rate, which makes it even more expensive. The xerogel works well at a lower cost. Because of the fine particle size, we noticed greater pressure rises through the filter run, so we stopped including it in the precoat and just added it to the body feed. We only used either of these products on our lightest beer.

I also agree with the poster above on the importance of cold maturation of close to or slightly below 0 deg C.

Cheers,
Travis

[malagabeer]

potassium metasulphite to stabilize beer

Does anyone use potassium metasulphite to stabilize beer? If you do, how much do you use per bbl to achieved the 10 ppm requiered by FDA?