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Removing Hop Particles Before Kegging

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  • Removing Hop Particles Before Kegging

    Hey everyone,

    Looking for some input / wisdom on getting hop particles out of beer prior to kegging.

    We have 5bbl unitanks and each time we brew our hoppy APAs or IPAs we are only able to keg down to the cone on the tank. Everything below the cone is lost to hop particles from the hop pellets. The cone holds about 6 kegs so its quite the loss on each brew. We have tried aggressively fining the beer with biofine and gelatin and still are unable to get any usable kegs out of the cone.

    We have a brite tank waiting to be hooked up and i'm interested in a way to remove the hop particles while transferring to the brite tank.

    I have been looking at the in line strainers from GW kent for about 1k with the 150 micron mesh but i'm not sure this will work well for this application.

    Any help would be awesome.

    Thanks

  • #2
    Hey,
    I`ve been working on the same issue recently. I have a 7 bbl brewhouse with both 7 and 15 bbl tanks. I use a strainer from Brewers Hardware TC15STRAINER30 with a finer mesh sock in it, FILTERNET30X040. I dont use it when transferring to the brite but only when packaging, both bottles and kegs. I only use it with my dry hopped beers. Some of my dry hopped beers I uni-tank and some I transfer. This strainer is not super big so it`s easy to work with and it does a good job of holding back the hops. I always let my beers settle for a couple of days at 30-32 degrees. As I said it does a really great job of keeping hops outta my kegs, even with 5-7 lbs/bbl of hops.
    Marius Graff,
    Head Brewer, Graff Brygghus
    Tromsø, Norway

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    • #3
      Marius, thanks for the reply. That sounds like a perfect setup for us as well.

      Would you do anything different if you had to start from scratch?

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      • #4
        Not really, no. I think the most important thing is to figure out exactly where to place the strainer so that its easy to work with and seals good, and does not put a lot of pressure on the fittings on tanks/hoses and so on. Most of the time I get around this just by slapping on an elbow. And do remember to flow through the strainer the correct direction.
        Marius Graff,
        Head Brewer, Graff Brygghus
        Tromsø, Norway

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        • #5
          Originally posted by MariusGraff View Post
          Not really, no. I think the most important thing is to figure out exactly where to place the strainer so that its easy to work with and seals good, and does not put a lot of pressure on the fittings on tanks/hoses and so on. Most of the time I get around this just by slapping on an elbow. And do remember to flow through the strainer the correct direction.
          We do a lot of heavily dry hopped beers in unis (with no port for a racking arm... Chinese...) and we’re looking to employ a similar method. Do you find that these strainers have any issues clogging up with heavily dry hopped beers?
          Last edited by GEB_Dave; 01-28-2018, 03:58 PM.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by GEB_Dave View Post
            We do a lot of heavily dry hopped beers in unis (with no port for a racking arm... Chinese...) and we’re looking to employ a similar method. Do you find that these strainers have any issues clogging up with heavily dry hopped beers?
            You might look at the dairy version of that. They use sock filters in milking parlors to remove sediment. It's basically a 24" long stainless coil that a snug-fitting sock filter fits over, and the open end of the sock and the coil end thread into a rubber "stopper" that has a 1.5" TC gasket built into it. The idea is that you slide this into the straight section of pipe coming from the bottom port on your uni or whatever. Then fit your hose and a TC clamp on it, and pump away (or push by head pressure). The sock filters are dirt cheap; less than 20 cents per unit in case quantity. Since the stainless tubing itself is the filter housing, you don't need a separate filter housing--every vessel comes with it's own. If your uni ends with an elbow and a valve, you do need a straight length of tube with a sanitary ferrule at each end. Clamp that on the uni bottom valve, and the hose on the other end, with the filter inside. Support the weight, of course.

            Schwartz Manufacturing makes these, but sells only through dairy supply stores, AFAIK. But it's all dirt cheap. ~$35 for the kit, and pennies for the socks.

            If you fitted a 1.5" sanitary Tee (one of the "run" ends) to the end of the tube, and put a butterfly valve on the branch end, you could do a block-and-bleed setup with these. A BOP near me (long since closed) used to block and bleed his strainer to clear clogged hops without having to take it down. Mine is mounted vertically above a sink, so that when I pull the filter, all the gunk ends up in the sink.

            Here's a picture of a sock, installed over the coil and threaded into the rubber TC stopper




            Regards,
            Mike Sharp

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            • #7
              We use the exact same strainer as a precursor to any filtering we do. Works really well for us for removing some of the larger particles.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by rdcpro View Post
                ...................
                Schwartz Manufacturing makes these, but sells only through dairy supply stores, AFAIK. But it's all dirt cheap. ~$35 for the kit, and pennies for the socks.

                ...............


                Regards,
                Mike Sharp
                Any idea what size these filter/strain at? micron?
                No indication on their flyer

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