Filtration Process for Home Brewed Beer: Part 1

Video Transcript

Hi! My name is Eddie Leal, and I’m the brewer here at Steelhead Brewing Company. On behalf of expertvillage.com, we’re going to go over the filtration process now. Now, what I have here is a diatomacious earth filter. For those of you that are wondering what a diatomacious earth is, it’s basically a real fine sediment that they retrieve actually from the ocean from fossils. That really fine sediment is what we add into this tank over here. It’s a really fine powder, but once it’s wet it becomes like a thick paste. That paste is what gets caked onto the filter screens, and it’s what filters out all the proteins and hop resin, that’s what clarifies the beer. Basically what it does, it filters the beer and then clarifies the beer. The beers that I have on draft, that are clear, that you can see through, go through this filter right here. Now, what happens is I add the diatomacious earth into the filter, and what it does it’ll pack onto the screens that I have in here. Basically, it forms like a paste and it’ll just cake onto those screens. Through the pressure, the beer will be forced through that paste and the screens, and it will filter out some of the proteins, hop resin, and yeast, and that’s what will clarify the beer. The reason beer is cloudy is because of the light reflecting off the protein that’s in the beer. Now, here I did 2 different types of filters. One, is this with the diatomaceous earth filter, where it clarifies the beer. Another type of filtration that I do here is a partial filtration, which basically I use a water cartridge. Which if you were a home brewer you could use this at home, since it’s a simple water cartridge. Basically, what I do here is just to filter out any kind of hop resin, yeast, that way you don’t have anything floating in your beer when you serve it, but it will leave it cloudy. I do all my stouts through this filtration; I do my heffeweizen,which is cloudy traditionally. There is no need to filter it through this process if I just do a partial filtration. I also filter our IPA with just that water cartridge. The India Pale Ale that I have on draft right now is cloudy if you could see it. That’s more because it’s my choice, and my customers seem to like it better that way

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