Filter Your Beer - If You Can

I normally don't bother filtering my beer. It usually clears nicely in the keg after a couple weeks of sitting under cold conditions in the kegerator. I add Irish moss in the last 15 minutes of the boil and with the aging in the keg, the beer is very clear after the first pint is drawn off, taking with it some yeasty dregs that settle near the pickup tube.

However, because the hobby of homebrewing for me is about trying different techniques and equipment, I decided to filter a couple of kegs to have the experience and witness personally the results of filtering. I chose a beer that was relatively young and one that I inadvertently forgot to add clarifying agents during the boil. It had some haze, more so than what I'm used to so this was a perfect candidate for my filtering project.

The process I used was typical, force the beer out of the keg through the filter and into a clean, sanitized and pressurized keg using c02.

I attached output ball lock connectors to the hoses that run to and from my filter. I placed a 1 micron filter in the filter canister. After attaching the connectors to the full and pressurized empty keg, I slowly released some pressure from the empty keg which allowed the beer to begin flowing. When I was done and had transferred all the beer into the new keg I examined the filter. It showed that a lot of particulate matter was trapped but after drawing off a pint and examining the freshly filtered beer, there was little evidence that the filtering had improved the clarity. The beer was slightly less hazing than before the filtering process. A good experience but hardly worth the effort.

I have been told that filtering the beer would strip the flavor in the process of clarifying but in this case it tasted the same and was just so slightly less murky.

Has anyone had success with this filtering business? Let us know how to do it with success.