Rough Filtration
I spent a late night here last night. Our distributor, Evans, came by and took more Schild Brau than we expected, only leaving us FOUR cases for the weekend! I was in the process of cleaning the bright tanks, but I though I could stay late and filter the beer anyway, so we could bottle it today, Friday, and have enough to get through the weekend.
Sometimes filtration is great, sometimes it is a PAIN. The machine is an octopus to hook up in the first place, and running it is an art into itself. This time I got everything rolling, but I started to have problems as soon as I started to put beer through it. The dosing pump was slipping and not dosing correctly. Eventually it would slow and stop dosing all together. The pump adds D.E. (filter powder) continously to the filter bed to keep it evenly porous. As the pump slipped, my bed would jam up and the filtration would slow to crawl.
After breaking down and restarting three times, I eventually gave up. I bypassed the filter and sent the last quarter of the batch into the tank unfiltered. So if you find a bottle of Schild Brau on the shelf in the next month, dated June, and it has a dusty sediment at the bottom, you’ll know why. Hey, unfiltered beers are popular!
Taking apart the filter today, I see the that dosing pump housing (which is made of plastic of all things) is worn away underneath one of the one-way valves. This would let air in, and cause it to slip. I had to order a new housing. The company I ordered from is the sole Velo filter part supplier in the US, as Velo is an Italien manufacturer. It was 189$ for a new plastic housing… and is not very big! Yea they have a monopoly, so they can also charge 16 bucks for each one inch gasket! Sometimes I wonder if i’m in the wrong business…
Oh, and to make it better, one of my brew boots developed a hole, so I was sloshing around with wet beer inside my boot. Cold wet beer. Not fun! The only good thing about yesterday, is that when I came upstairs to change boots, I saw this beautiful rainbow outside! Strangely, it made me feel better!
