Unfiltered filtered beer...

[RaySherwood]

I've seen another post regarding a "leaky" filtration and I think I have a similar problem.

I ran a batch of beer through my plate and frame filter and ended up just slightly improving the clarity. Same filter, pads and techniques I've used several times before with nice results, but this time the yeast seemed to pass right thru. I'm at a loss. I think I may have 180'ed my frames while giving it a thorough cleaning but I'm not sure that would have this much impact.

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks...

[pennbrew2]

Yes, if you "180" some of your plates, you will create a pathway for unfiltered beer to bypass the filter sheets.

It's also not unheard-of for filter sheets to fail, or for a box of them to be mis-labeled.

Also, sometimes a haze will be present in a beer that a filter sheet won't remove.

It's hard to pinpoint a filter problem over the internet, there are many different possible causes.

[jarviw]

why don't you run some DE/water through the filter, and see where the DE end up?
DE should coat the filter and allow spotting problem areas, and you will definitely know if there's DE in the out end.
when you are done, just rinse it off and you won't even waste your sheets.

a pound of DE should be plenty for this experiment.

[RaySherwood]

I've reconfigured the plates 180* and no immediate impact. My next guess is that my new pack of filter pads is insufficent for beer yeast. I'm using a pack of Begerow BECO-KD 3 depth filter sheets that came iwth my filter. Previous runs I've done with Pall filter pads have been very brite. Anyone have experience with these KD-3s?

Thanks
Ray

[JMBrewer]

I have filtered with the KD-3 sheets and wound up with a 12 hour filtration for a 30 BBL batch of a lager that would have only taken 3-4 hours with our Pall sheets. During the filtration I had over 2.5 Bar pressure with 0 pressure difference. With the Pall sheets, we normally see at most 1.5-2 Bar pressures. I tried back-flushing to no avail.

I spoke with a sales rep. from AFTEK who sold us the sheets, and he informed me that the sheets are meant for post DE filtration. We have since gone back to our Pall sheets.

James

[tsewong73]

Yeah, I was the guy with the previous post about filtration problems. It turned out that my problem was two-fold: 1) I cranked the hell out of the press which compacted the sheets too much and forced the beer to by-pass at least half the sheets at the screw end of the plate and frame filter; and 2) I think my sheets were too fine and were getting clogged too quickly with yeast. At the same time, I think I was having a problem with autolyzed yeast causing a haze in the filtered beer. I've since backed off on cranking the down on the press and I've been much more successful with my filtration. I'm also going to use a less fine Pall filter sheet as soon as I'm through with what I have in stock. As for the yeast, I switched my yeast supplier and yeast strain to a more highly flocculating strain and it's worked wonders.

The new yeast supplier's prices are also lower, so BONUS!

[RaySherwood]

Well we've been trouble shooting all week and we've come to one conclusion. It's the pads. The Beco KD-3 pads are about a quarter inch too big for our filter and keep the frames from seeling up. I've been pulling my hair out for a week now and the solution was trimming a little off each pad to get the filter to seal until I can get some other pads.

Anybody else find this?

[JoeV]

We have had similar experience with our plate and frame. Only slight improvement after filtering. First we would use pall k900 and then down to k300. We discovered from microscopic examination of the beer that there were very small (i am presuming freshly budded) yeast cells (wild yeast were ruled out). Smaller in fact than the K300 pads nominal porosity. Another variable is that there was less total yeast pre-filter, so smaller yeast coupled with less yeast over all decreased our filtering efficiency. I think if you have a lot of yeast pre filter it tends to cake on the sheets and actually increases your filter performance. I am so tired of filtering beer.

[DaveP.]

I use the k700 pads and get bright beer for 23 bbls in about an hour. I have had an issue in the past where the sheets were labeled wrong.