empting the filter bell

[oppigards]

What is your practic empting the filter bell in the end of a filter run. We pressurize the bell with co2 from the top and empty the bell to the highest filter screen and let the rest go to drain. When discussed this with Velo they says that "everyone" pumps in water in the end of the filter run until the beer change color in the sight glass. In my world I think that the beer wil get diluted pretty soon and oxidized.

[william.heinric]

Good to the last drop

Does your filter have a residual filter on it? If it does, then all you have to push with CO2 is the residual. Our FVF10 does, and it generally saves the beer in the bell, and then I can isolate it and clear it and the line with CO2.

I have run an FVF5 without a residual, and I pushed beer out of the bell with hot water. The hot actually makes things slightly easier, as there is a temperature change that accompanies the color change. Also, the hot water will by definition have less oxygen than cold water from the same source, and dilution is minimal if your filter is appropriately scaled to your batch.

Bill

[safety man]

Using De-airated water

I ran a "unique" filter at a small regional for a year or so. They had an interesting idea that actually worked very well.
They set up a 5 BBL grundy with a CO2 stone inserted near the bottom. They also had a pinpoint carbonater in line to the grundy.
The night before a filter run we used a cartridge filter to remove nasties from the city water, and scrubbed the O2 out of the beer with the CO2.
This was extremely effective! We had an orbishpehere DO meter and after a few hours with the CO2 stone on full blast and a blow off vent open we basically eliminated the DO in the water down to around 5 PPB, which is like nothing.
We used this carbonated water to push out the beer in the bell, and had excellent success. We would generally do 100 BBL filter runs, and we ended up saving around 4 BBL out of the filter bell every run.
This really made our cellar yields look a lot better. 4% increase in cellar yield is significant.
The water did dillute the beer in the bell a little, but in a large run it was entirely unperceivable.

[froptus]

I used to use water to push the remaining beer through the filter but after some thought it seemed like a bad idea considering the typical bacterial content of water. I now simply hook the CO 2 to the top of the bell and push the beer out until very little is going past the sight glass. This is the method recommended by the manual. It works well.

[chaser]

i've never pushed beer through with water. cant think of a good reason to do it. you wont be saving yields that way and also will be risking the chance of contamination and oxidation. as said a residual filter will help you minimize loss and achieve the best results but this typically is only available on larger model filters. On the ten meter filter I run currently I run through a residual. I've also run a three and seven meter filter where we simply crashed the bed, hooked up co2 to the bell and run through the scavenger plate. Most of the times it also went through a plate and frame filter which was also pushed out with co2. the beer was always bright and i saw no micro problems with doing this. Between a 3, 7, and 10 meter filter the loss (beer still in the filter) was always about a half gallon. The only thing i see the use for as far as de-oxygenated water goes is for the pre-coat stage, and the process is too long and complicated to be worth it. I'd personally rather lose a few gallons of beer for pre-coating than going through that hassle.

[dick murton]

Pushing out with deaerated water is standard practice. The comments about risk of dilution are correct, but you should be able to retrieve a fair volume of beer before it dilutes the final product unacceptably. I used towns water at a few breweries, and again, the comments about risk if oxygen pick up and flavour changes are correct - however, we still found it economically worthwhile.

I'm not familiar with the internal design of this particular filter, and the flows through it, so can't comment further, but if you have copies you can email me, I will tell you how I would work it

Cheers

[dick murton]

Hi Bjorn

There is a group of people sailing from London to St Petersburg with a few cask of Imperial Russion Stout in May / June. I am doing the leg from Copenhagen to Stockholm. We are due to arrive on 4th June, with a mini beer festival in a pub or two.

I don't know if you are anywhere near there and want to meet up

As far as I know, there are still crewing spaces available.

See www.thegreatbalticadventure.com for details

Cheers

[dick murton]

Hi Bjorn

There is a group of people sailing from London to St Petersburg with a few cask of Imperial Russion Stout in May / June. I am doing the leg from Copenhagen to Stockholm. We are due to arrive on 4th June, with a mini beer festival in a pub or two.

I don't know if you are anywhere near there and want to meet up

As far as I know, there are still crewing spaces available.

See www.thegreatbalticadventure.com for details

Cheers

[oppigards]

It would be really nice to meet you in Stockholm. Do you have contacts with best pubs in Stockholm. If not I will help you.

The filter this time is also a Velo filter but it is specially designed for beer filtration = the italians have promised me that they have polished welds inside the filter this time! The filter have no last filter screen filtration and with a bigger filter bell it will be a bigger loss of beer in the end of filtration. Maybe we shold try to deaerate water with the method above.

By the way we are upgrading the brewery from 23 hl/batch to 40hl/batch and double the annual capacity. No export to GB yet!
Cheers
Björn

[oppigards]

I saw on the website that you will have a beer party at Oliver Twist that night in Stockholm Oliver Twist is one of the best pubs in Stockholm and they use to have our beer on draught.