Filtering Home Brewed Beer

by Brad Smith on August 27, 2010 · 60 comments

Almost all commercial brewers filter their beer to rapidly improve flavor and clarity. Yet few home brewers filter their beer, either because they lack the equipment or prefer the raw flavor of unfiltered beer. However filtering is a good option for intermediate to advanced brewers who want crystal clear, smooth flavored beer.

Why Filter?

Filtering removes yeast, tannins and some large proteins from the beer that contribute both to off flavors and haze. While many of these impurities will eventually precipitate out of the beer through lagering and aging, filtering accelerates the process by removing them in minutes instead of weeks or months. This is a big reason why commercial brewers use filters – time is money and it is much cheaper for them to filter the beer than store it for weeks or months.

Filtering also has the advantage that it can remove very small impurities from the beer – even those that would not fall out of suspension in the natural aging process. Filters can remove particles as small as 1 micron or even smaller. This can result in a cleaner flavor and much better clarity than is possible with natural aging.

A question many new brewers ask is if they can filter their beer to eliminate the sediment in the bottom of the bottles? The answer is unfortunately no, unless you have some kind of kegging/carbonation system. Filtering the beer removes the yeast from it, so if you filter and then bottle with priming sugar you will just get flat beer.

The only way to filter and bottle beer is to filter your beer into a keg, then artificially carbonate it, and then bottle it from the keg using a counter-pressure bottle filler or beer gun. Also having a pressurized keg makes it much easier to use an inline filter, as gravity works very slowly with typical beer filters.

Choosing a Filter

First, you need to choose a filter size. The filter should be fine enough to filter out tannins and yeast cells, but not too fine or it could alter the flavor of your finished beer. Around 1 micron is the sweet spot for filter size – smaller than 0.5 microns and you risk filtering out some flavor, while larger ones (5 micron and up) may leave yeast in the beer. To filter out bacteria which some commercial brewers do for shelf stability, you need to go to 0.3 microns or below. I don’t recommend going below 0.5 microns for home brewing.

Another factor when choosing filter size is how fast your filter may clog. Many commercial brewers actually use a two stage filter. They start with a 5 micron filter to eliminate the large particles and then use a smaller 0.5 micron filter inline as a second stage to filter small particles. If you have a large budget you can do the same, but for a single filter 1 micron is fine.

The most popular beer filters are inline canister filters with a replaceable filter element. These are inexpensive and work well if you have high quality filter cartridges. Some wine filters come in a plate format which offers a larger surface area that is less prone to clogging. I do not recommend using household water filters as these are slow and prone to clogging. Purchase a filter designed for use with beer and change your filter often as the small inline filters clog quickly.

Filtering Your Homebrew

Despite the fact that filtering can be used to accelerate the aging of your beer, you don’t want to filter your home brewed beer too early. Some important chemical changes take place during the later phases of fermentation and early aging. If you halt these too early by filtering you will end up with poor flavor balance. Commercial brewers use a additives and techniques that allow them to filter earlier.

Allow the beer to fully complete fermentation and then sit in the secondary for at least 2-3 weeks before filtering, then move it to your keg. The filtering process is very simple if you use two kegs. Place your inline filter in between the full and empty kegs and use low CO2 pressure to transfer the beer from one keg to the other through the filter.

Once the filtering/transfer is complete, close the top on the second keg, purge the air from the top several times and you can refrigerate and force carbonate it as you normally would with any keg.

Filtering home brewed beers is not always required or even desired, but when you want that extra bit of clarity and clean finish it is a nice alternative. Do you have thoughts or experience with filtering? Leave a comment below. Thank you for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog. Subscribe for more articles as well as the latest news on my upcoming brewing book and other BeerSmith products.

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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }

Mazen July 5, 2018 at 5:23 am

Mr Smith
thanks for all the notes.you suggestd to use liquid Yeast ,but malt manufacturer provide us with granual yeast

Louwrens A Dreyer April 9, 2020 at 10:27 am

Hi, im looking for a filter that i can use to filter my home made beer. Im looking for something that can filter 500L beer before i need to clean the filter..any suggestions?

Eli Richardson March 4, 2021 at 10:25 am

It’s great that you talked about the importance of filtering your brewed beer. One of my cousins is a beer lover, and he’s thinking about learning how to brew his own. He recently discovered he could make his own home-made beer, so I think this article could help him out. I appreciate your tips about how filtering your beer improves its flavor.

Daniel May 23, 2021 at 11:40 am

“The only way to filter and bottle beer is to filter your beer into a keg, then artificially carbonate it, and then bottle it from the keg using a counter-pressure bottle filler or beer gun”

That is incorrect; there are several ways to filter beer – and of course filtering is unnecessary to begin with. Isinglass, Irish moss, simply letting everything settle out completely and being extremely careful when racking…even the kind of yeast used makes a difference in clarity, as some yeast settles out more readily than others. This article sounds like sales ad for mechanical filtering systems, honestly.

Craig July 20, 2021 at 5:56 am

Daniel it sounds like you havent read the article correctly. It explains why you would filter it and not just wait for particles to fall out of suspension. And they are correct saying you will need to carbonate it in a keg and use a beer gun to fill bottles because again like the article explains once the beer is filtered there is no yeast left present in the beer to carbonate using sugar. And its not an advert as there are no links anywhere to any products to purchase nor does it mention any brands.

Scott Spencer August 8, 2021 at 3:18 pm

There’s just so many different styles of beer that this article doesn’t really speak to. Like NE-IPA OR just regular old IPA that are hazy characteristicly. While a good IPA is usually dry hopped throughout the fermentation period and even sometimes into conditioning. A proper or conical fermentor will be up to task of cold crashing, that will usually knock everything pretty well out of suspension. Using both a conical and bright tank can usually get the job done. You also get the luxury of recycling yeast!! But there’s always more than 1 way to skin a cat.

Mike Swift February 21, 2022 at 10:33 am

I have been using #2 Polishing Filter with my Super Colombo machine and they work great for small batches.

Tachikoma March 27, 2022 at 9:21 pm

Isinglas and other finings aren’t an active filter though. For speedy clarity, you need to pump the beer through filter media. It’s not a sales ad at all it’s actually just helpful information.

craig w July 17, 2023 at 12:48 pm

My question would be is it a one shot use of the 5 micron or 1 micron filter or can it be cleaned and sanitized to get a few uses out of them.

Chris November 14, 2023 at 6:27 pm

I use the course filter from my Buon Vino mini jet filtering system I use for wine. Clears beer in a snap. The course filter doesn’t clog at all. I only filter my lagers.

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