"Tips and tricks to using a whole house filter"

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I use the 5 for DB and the 1 for skeeter pee.
Skeeter Pee is almost like an "add on" flavour so no worry there - some people report not much or no sediment for DB even without filtering - just racking.
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I re-bottled and filtered rhubarb , crabapple using a "1" - these are like white wines.

I did Walmarts' apple juice, fruit store bought concentrates using a "1" as these are prepared and/or cleared concentrates .
I filtered and re-bottled 100 bottles of home made non-kit wines with terrible sediment from last year that had never been filtered- that was a lesson to filter in the first place!


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Natural berries like DB , I think I should use a "5", I'm afraid I might lose something - but maybe a "1" would do - since the clearing from all reports is so well, probably either would do. I'm not making DB for years of aging but I'll see what any leftovers might look like in the bottle next year.
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For the'fruit particles escaping' I actually dump the fruit bag into the mix on the last day!! Yes !
I do the pressing , because I want it pressed and the dumping because I want every last bit of it the fruit flavour taken into the ferment - waste not, want not.



As for the fruit particles etc, I filter them out with a common household wire filter when I do the first time racking from the carboy - these are far too large to be wanting to pass them through the whole house filter.
Actually most of the time I rack I pass the wine through a common wire filter regardless just to take out any large particles might be around. Only time I don't need the wire filter is bottling or backsweetening after filtering with whole house filter.



The whole house filter will clog with heavy detritus - (happened to me once with the tail end of my first skeeter pee not completely settled - got it all through with one or two stoppages and cleaning of filter - but is manually troublesome - don't recommend it). These kinds of things should be racked out/settled out long before filtering time IMO.
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Dropped on the floor and broke a whole house filter by accident after it was past it's use anyway. It's uniform material all the way through and very solid - Given the nature of the material seems to lend itself to rinsing and reusing filter while it is still fresh.

Thanks! I was thinking the same thing.... 1 micron for SP and 5 for DB. I have noticed some very small floaties in the SP after the 1 micron filter but I'm not losing sleep over it! :)
 
So I added the recommended hose to the center of my filter housing to draw from the bottom of the unit, and now it only fills up about halfway when it filters. Is this normal or is there a problem somewhere? There doesn't appear to be an immediate damage to the quad-berry DB I just filtered through it (loooong story of it HAD to be done), but I don't want to risk running a long-termer through it if it will cause damage.

This week I will be purchasing a second whole house filter so that my hubby can double filter his home brew, and I don't want to make an order if I need to buy additional equipment.
 
So I added the recommended hose to the center of my filter housing to draw from the bottom of the unit, and now it only fills up about halfway when it filters. Is this normal or is there a problem somewhere? There doesn't appear to be an immediate damage to the quad-berry DB I just filtered through it (loooong story of it HAD to be done), but I don't want to risk running a long-termer through it if it will cause damage.

This week I will be purchasing a second whole house filter so that my hubby can double filter his home brew, and I don't want to make an order if I need to buy additional equipment.

Did you mark the housings with some sort of a marker as this thread in the beginning talks about ?

Does this happen with new filters or just between batches ?

I do not recommend putting 2 filters in line with each other
 
Yep, its marked.

This is the first time that I've used it with the hose inserted, so I can't be 100% sure.

Why would they make dual housings systems for two stage beer filtering if you shouldn't use two together? I'm not trying to be a smart allec or anything, I'm just confuzzled.
 
Filter Size

Hello,
I know that the 5 micron is 'for reds' and the 1 micron is 'for whites'...but if your going to go down to 1 micron...should you hit it with a 5 micron first so you don't clog the filter? Just curious. Thanks.
-Scott
 
I ran 15 gallons of assorted wines through a 1micron filter yesterday and didn't have a problem with clogging. You could run it through both but that's twice the work and twice the cost. I don't know about you but I'm frugal and always conserving energy (aka cheap and lazy lol) so if I can get away with only one filtering I will.
 
Yes that is the correct filter -
Run several batches thru it - I don't reuse it for the minimal cost of that filter and possibly ruin a complete batch of wine ??
 
A lot has been said here... The parts list in post 1, is that a gravity feed or vacuum? If gravity can it be altered to be vacuum?
It's very tempting since alternatives cost $199.
 
A lot has been said here... The parts list in post 1, is that a gravity feed or vacuum? If gravity can it be altered to be vacuum?
It's very tempting since alternatives cost $199.

Some have tried and the results were it had too much resistance within the filter to gravity filter - with this style of filter.

If you want - Im sure I could find the posts where several people attempted the same thing
 
So what's used to put a vacuum on it? One of those automotive brake bleeder style hand pumps?
 
I am going to filter my wine soon. I bought the 1 and 5 micron filter. One is for beer and the other is for wine I just cannot remember which is which. Can you help??

Thanks,

Tom
 
5 micron is for your deep reds typically and the 1 micron is for your whites or fruit wines.
So I would imagine that you would be using a 1 micron for beer - but I am not a beer maker
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I am going to filter my wine soon. I bought the 1 and 5 micron filter. One is for beer and the other is for wine I just cannot remember which is which. Can you help??

Thanks,

Tom

My hubby uses MY AIO for his brew. He's used both a 5 and a 1 micron (normally he just filters when I filter because I already have the setup out and he finishes out filter usage with his brew), and even a double filtration system going first through the 5, then the 1. I can't tell much of a difference either way.

My only thought would be that a 1 micron might get gunked up easily unless you were using a secondary fermentation on your brew. The only basis for that would be that a secondary fermentation step would allow for further clearing.

We use our AIO for several aspects of his brewing, transferring, filtering, and kegging. Post-keg bottling is even an in-the-works project.

If you have any questions I may be able to help with, just holler at me either here or via PM.

I'm one of the biggest fans of the AIO, and truly believe that its potential is limitless.

Keep on keep in' on!!!
 
It is in secondary right now. It is a pumpkin ale and has quite a bit of gunk at the bottom of the carboy even though I strained it after the boil and pumped it out of primary to the secondary. I want it to be clear and crisp when I bottle it. That is why I wanted to filter it. However I think the 1m filter may get clogged to easy as well with the pumpkin so I think I will just filter once with the 5m filter. Do you bottle immediately after filtering or do you let the beer set in a carboy for a while?
 
It is in secondary right now. It is a pumpkin ale and has quite a bit of gunk at the bottom of the carboy even though I strained it after the boil and pumped it out of primary to the secondary. I want it to be clear and crisp when I bottle it. That is why I wanted to filter it. However I think the 1m filter may get clogged to easy as well with the pumpkin so I think I will just filter once with the 5m filter. Do you bottle immediately after filtering or do you let the beer set in a carboy for a while?

Come to think about it, if you are planning to bottle carbonate, I would think that you wouldn't want to use a 1 micron because there may not be enough yeast left to get your bubbles going. I can't be 100% sure, but it seems logical.

We're keg people. I know there's nothing wrong with bottle carbonating, we just couldn't get past the ugly junk at the bottom of the bottle. I wanted him to have all the goodies when he started brewing, and since I already had all the wine equipment, I went "Super-Wife" and set him up with a keezer with a 2 corny keg system to start off.

However we have filtered and kegged from both primary and secondary. If I recall correctly, we did have one batch that we kegged directly from primary and filtered through a 5 micron that did have some residual sludge at the bottom of the keg when it was emptied.

We've been experimenting with bottling from the keg using the AIO, but due to some legal problems, time and concentration has been pulled away from any hobby related endeavors. I really hope to be able to experiment some more in the next few days.
 
Is it a bad idea to filter my tempranillo garnacha with a P1 filter?

I know there are a few that will disagree with me, but I filter all my wines down to 1 micron, whites and reds. Most commercial vineyards go down to almost .5 to achieve a sterile filter... I remember hearing once that flavour molecules compared to sterile filter is like throwing a ping pong ball through soccer netting. In other words flavour molecules much too small to get caught in any filter we could do at home.
 
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