REVIEW: *Whole House Wine Filtering*

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dangerdave

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Hi, everyone! Your friend, Danger, here.

There has been a lot of traffic on the forum of late, related to the use of the whole house filters with the Allinonewinepump. I am a strong advocate---like many of you---in favor of Steve's awesome vacuum pump and its time and labor saving qualities. To this day, I have yet to add a more useful item (aside from an hydrometer) to my winemaking Lab.

I have recently made the plunge into wine filtering with the receipt of a Vinbrite filter for Christmas. You can see my review of that system here: http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f3/review-vinbrite-wine-filter-kit-36142/

In this review, I will check the function of the whole house filter system recommended for use with the Allinonewinepump (you can see my review of the Allinone here: http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f3/review-allinonewinepump-15976/). If you skim through that thread, you can see how some others have faired with their use of this whole house wine filter system. Below, you will witness my experience, and my take on its usage.

The order from filtersfast.com included the following: Pentek-158116-Filter Housing, Pentek-244027 Mounting Bracket, Pentek SW-1A Filter Wrench, and Pentek-PD-1-934 (1 Micron) Sediment Filter (x2), all for around $30. The filters price at $4.50 each. Steve was nice enough to send me the two hose barbs so I could try this setup for myself.

I inserted the filter cartridge, screwed on the housing, and several minutes later, I had the bracket mounted on the end of my Lab bench, out of the way. Not bad so far.

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Now, to check the functionality. The first thing I did was run five gallons of water through the filter (not shown). I let the vacuum pump run until the carboy was dry to see how much air it would pull to drain the filter. Since the outlet in the housing is at the top, a lot of air ran through the water while the liquid was drawn down in the filter. Not a good thing for finished wine. This is the reason why those who use this setup install the up-take tube inside the housing to pull the wine from the bottom of the canister, and avoid this extra air contact. Below is an example of the installed tube (courtesy of Steve).

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With this tube installed, I was able to draw the liquid down to nearly the bottom of the housing, losing very little in the process (maybe 6 oz).

Ok---deep breath---now for the wine. My precious German Muller-Thurgau (below) was almost clear. I racked the wine off its sediment and into one of my utility carboys (6.5 gallon capacity). Let's see how this famed filter works.

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My plan was to filter the wine into a five gallon carboy and a gallon jug. The process went fairly quickly---about 5-6 minutes---with no air running through the wine whatsoever. The canister and barbs sealed nicely, protecting the wine from oxygen exposure.

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The wine came out nicely clear, as expected. When the five gallon carboy was full, I moved the tube to the one gallon jug and let gravity finish the job. When the top carboy was empty, the siphon stopped on its own. Like I said before, I lost about six ounces of wine in the bottom of the filter housing, maybe less.

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The wine looked great!

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Thanks to my trusty allinonewinepump, I proceeded directly to bottling. A short time later, I had a few dozen (and a half) lovely bottles of Muller-Thurgau, ready for the rack.

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I then asked myself, "Now what?" I had a used filter housing with some wine left in the bottom. Steve says he does not reuse his filters, adding the $4.50 filter cost to the price of producing one batch of wine, and pitches the filter cartridge afterwards. However, these filters are meant to be used for many gallons of water. How many gallons of wine you could expect to clear with one filter is debatable, no doubt, but my guess is that it is more than six. So, I decided to reuse the filter---or make the attempt. I flushed the filter and housing by running more water through it to wash out the wine. I then unsceweded the housing and filled it with a mild sanitizer solution. I put it back together to await my next filtering project.

Here is the cost and function comparison between the whole-house-filter system (WHF) and the Vinbrite Filter Kit, both of which I own and have reviewed.

WHF System: $20 plus $4.50 for the 1 Micron filter. The cost per batch of wine comes down to the cost of a filter cartridge (if you do not reuse). If you could run 5-10 batches through a filter, the cost would become negligible. The assembly and installation was easy enough, with less than an hour of initial setup time. Cleanup time was maybe ten minutes, to run some water through the filter and add sanitizer solution. Operation time---to filter one six gallon batch---was about five minutes.

Vinbrite Mark iii Wine Filter Kit: $39.99 @ Amazon.com. The kit comes with six single-use Crystalbrite filter pads, so your first six batches filter for free. A replacement pack of six filters costs $11.99 at Northern Brewer, which equates to about $2 a pad. The pads are not reusable. Assembly was quick---less than three minutes---and the setup was comprehensive---another three minutes. Using gravity, it took about 45 minutes to move the wine through the filter. Cleanup was a quick wash with cleanser and warm water.

Both of these systems work great for filtering wine. I think it all comes down to how much wine you have to filter. The Vinbrite is great if you run a small production, and only have an occasional batch to filter now and then. In the beginning, startup costs are slightly higher, but this is quickly overcome by the low cost of the filter pads. Two bucks per batch to have a nice clear wine is well worth it. The time in filtering with the Vinbrite worked well for me. I got it going and trended to other chores while the wine filtered. If I had more than one batch to filter, I could easily bottle one batch (with my allinone) while the other ran through the Vinbrite. Of course, if you do not own a vacuum pump, the Vinbrite is the logical choice (or buy a pump from Steve @ http://allinonewinepump.com/).

On the other hand, if I did have multiple batches of the same kind of wine to filter, the WHF system would be very handy. Using my vacuum pump, I could run all the wine through the same filter and have it all nice and clear in a short time, and in that way reduce the filter-per-batch cost.

In conclusion, I will have to give both of these systems a hearty thumbs up. They both work well. Which you might chose to use depends on your production rate and your personal wine making methods.

:br Thanks for reading everyone! Danger, out!

<I would be interested to hear from others who use the whole house filter system. Do you reuse their filter cartridges or not, and why? How many gallons of wine do you filtered with one cartridge, and were there any undesirable results? How do you store the used cartridges between uses?>
 
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Excellent post. Thanks for all of your observations.

I think the filters will last a long time. I simply washed mine with hot water and placed it in a zip lock bag with a bit of sulfite solution. I will store it this way. Next time I need it I'll just run a few gallons of clean water through it before I filter wine.

You can filter multiple batches of wine and simply flush it with clean water in between batches. Of course you could flush with a sulfite solution too.
 
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Dave
That was a great Review of the whole house filtration system along with comparison of the vinbrite as well !! It is amazing the difference that filtering can do to polish your wine.

Thanks again for spending the time to do another review - I am sure it will hopefully help out alot of people in their decision making

BTW - When I do filter with the WHF - I will filter most everything I can, using the same cartridge because typically they are all due to be racked anyways.
 
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Very nice writing. I just filtered 2 five gallons of wine with the home house filter and Steves pump, and it worked great. I do not run sulfite throw the filter, I place it in my corkado, the night before on top of a plastic canister with holes in it. On big hole in the middle is where I place my filter to be sanitized.
 
Help me understand your theory about installing a tube in the center, won't that pull all the wine from the bottom of the canister and not using the entire filter? I mean isnt the whole idea for the water to flow thru all of the filter and not just the bottom.....what am I missing here?
 
Rob, it's a good question and I don't know the answer. I suspect regardless of having a tube or not the vacuum will pull on the entire inner chamber of the filter.

I don't have a tube in mine. I don't have my filter mounted so I simply turn it upside down when it's nearing the end to pull out as much wine as possible.
 
Help me understand your theory about installing a tube in the center, won't that pull all the wine from the bottom of the canister and not using the entire filter? I mean isnt the whole idea for the water to flow thru all of the filter and not just the bottom.....what am I missing here?


The wine will all get filtered thru the whole filter - it just gets sucked up from the bottom. The only time you would use just the bottom of the filter is when you are trying to empty the housing after you are completly done.

I hope this all makes sence
 
Excellent review. Very informative. Thank you for posting this information. My allinone has been shipped. I think I will be selling my mini jet and going to this system in the very near future.
 
I've been reading all I can on the WHF approach to polishing wine. I'm eager to get on with the filtering aspects but still remain a tad concerned with maintaining sanitary conditions, particularly long term. The sad thing about this would be to find short comings a year into the bottle.

Using new filters would reduce any risk but I do like the possibility of reusing a filter. Getting one clean and keeping it that way is where the challenge lies I believe.

Storage in kmeta and flushing with sanitary water before reuse sounds effective. But does flushing after use with water actually clear the trapped biological debris which was removed from the wine? Is this a problem if something is left behind? Lots of questions I guess but they are just concerns if experiences indicate no longterm crashes where filtering was in play.

So, are there any longterm experiences on reusing WHFs to share? Comments?

Great forum subject BTW....
 
I suggest filtering several carboys at 1 time and disposing that 4 dollar filter. The particles will get trapped inside the wound filter and you may get some out by back flushing - I personally don't want to find out 6 months latter that - yea I guess I should of spent that extra 4 dollars and regret it.

I do have absolute filters which cost around 100 dollars and they have a different media - so I do reuse those
 
Just a note if you are looking for filter housings. The Pentek 158117 part number is the one with the air pressure release button on the top of the housing. You want the Pentek 158116 which is the same thing but without that valve.
 
Thanks Greg
I have told people in the past to purchase 158326 but they seem to run out of these alot. I will update my website to note this upgrade

Thanks !!
 
Thanks Greg
I have told people in the past to purchase 158326 but they seem to run out of these alot. I will update my website to note this upgrade

Thanks !!

The one you have is cheaper! Only half the price. I don't know why there are so many different ones. I'd buy the 158326.
 
I suggest filtering several carboys at 1 time and disposing that 4 dollar filter. The particles will get trapped inside the wound filter and you may get some out by back flushing - I personally don't want to find out 6 months latter that - yea I guess I should of spent that extra 4 dollars and regret it.

when you say several do you of the same type of wine or do one flush with water, next carboy different wine, flush, next carboy different wine?

and reusing filters aside from some particulates getting through what else would you see as being an issue?
 
Yes I will go from 1 Carboy to another - I have the pipe inside my housing, so there is very little loss or exchanging taste from 1 wine to another.

I will typically will filter only whites or reds - using the same filter and I go from dry to sweet or a lighter red to heavier red .

I just corrected it - Thanks Roy
 
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Steve, I do the same as you, filter 3-5 carboys at a time. But when I filter reds, I filter lighter reds first then proceed to darker/heavier reds in some sort of order. Is that different from what you do? Roy
 
Steve, I do the same as you, filter 3-5 carboys at a time. But when I filter reds, I filter lighter reds first then proceed to darker/heavier reds in some sort of order. Is that different from what you do? Roy

Thanks Roy -
I went back and corrected my statement.
Good catch
 
Steve, do you rinse in between with water or sulfite?

I do not typically - unless there is a known possible issue with one of the wines that I am filtering. Rember these filters are made to filter alot of gallons - not exactly sure - I typically will say around 60 gallons. I have heard others say in the hundreds,so I guess it all depending how clear your wine is prior to filtering and what size micron you are using.
 
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