Filtration aspect..

[Piko]

To filter or not to filter beer? Unfortunately I was never able to taste beer before and after filtration. Now I am puting together small craft brewery and somehow cant make my mind if I'll filter or not.
I've read that filtering not only remove yeas but also hop flavours/sunbstances. Can there be problem with some healthy hoped IPA for instance? On the other hand what can filtration add to shelf life?
My idea was to maybe filter some smaller beers(pale ale, porter..) and leave bigger beers unfiltered. I'll fill bottles and kegs.
Any comment will be appreciated.

[william.heinric]

I guess that it all depends on your objectives. What will your market support, are you capable of selling a less-than-crystaline bright beer, etc? A big one that many people forget to ask is what is the elevation of your brewhouse? What kind of turnover are you expecting out of the FVs?

My philosophy is that you should approach it from a holistic viewpoint. Think about the cost of filtering versus the benefit of filtering. Also, consider your process...are you confided that you're running the filter correctly, and not destroying the beer in the process? My thought is that you should filter the brand that will make up the bulk of your sales, but keep your prestige beers as a tribute to the best product you can make, which probably means unfiltered.

That's my $0.17. Hopefully it didn't obfuscate the matter too much.

Good luck,
Bill