filtering "dirty" finished products

[bonacker]

Hello all,
I have a question as to what you pros are using to filter some of your products. in particular, I have a strawberry panty dropper going now, and have separated the liquids from the various steps. after adding the sugar the liquids I collected had quite a large amount of sediment in them. I was able to wait long enough for most of it to settle down but not all of it. I have tried filtering with coffee filters, but they are too fine, after about 10 seconds they plug up and I get no liquid going through them. wondering what the most effective solutions would be.
Thank you

[kiwi Bruce]

If you don't have one, you can make one. A flat filter bed from a round 2 gal food grade bucket. Drill a bunch of 1/4 inch holes in the bottom. Line the bottom of the filter with a nylon mesh, (the type you'll get from a homebrew store) load the filter and mesh with a layer 1/4 to 1/2 inch bed of food grade diatomaceous earth. Wet this down with clean water until the DE forms a filter bed, then ditch the filtered water and start with your product. DE is a very good filter and should handle what you have in short order. I've used this in homebrewing an all grain beer, when trying to sparge the sugars out of a grain bed, and the sparge gets stuck. Meaning no more liquid will come though. I'll put it on a DE filter and 1/2 an hour I'll have 5 gal go through. Kiwi Bruce

[shadylane]

Just a thought
If your filter plugs up, use a bigger filter and/or use several filters, coarse first then finer.

[NZChris]

Decant or siphon the clear, then give the rest a swirl and filter it through your liver.

[shadylane]

Decant or siphon the clear, then give the rest a swirl and filter it through your liver.

Good answer

[ga flatwoods]

Drop in a packet of pure gelatin. Give it a few days to clear.

[Chucker]

I've been aging on charred oak strips and often have just enough ash and fines remaining that it takes forever to clear. Coffee filters will take out some but not all of the ash. And they are slow if there are a lot of fines present. After a bunch of reading from wine and brew sites I decided to try some bentonite as it is cheap as dirt (ha! It is dirt!), won't impart any flavors or make any chemical or color changes. I also tried another fining agent but it was $$ and not effective. Bentonite is the ticket.
I prefilter the liquid through a fairly open, non-woven milk filter to catch the big stuff then add a little bentonite. A couple of tablespoons, prehydrated to a thin slurry and well shaken in the resting jug (1 gallon) is all it needs. Usually within about 2-3 weeks, maybe sooner, all of the junk will settle to the bottom where I can easily decant it off for final cut and bottling. If it doesn't clear then there is some component of the haze that isn't binding with the bentonite and ash fines weren't the only problem. I still run through at least a milk filter and/or coffee filter during transfer and bottling just to keep out any stray particulate whether airborne or carryover.
Once decanted I recombine all of my decanted bottoms for resettling and keep at it until it's just sludge. The very last of the clear that I can no longer decant gets pulled with a wine thief to become the garage bottle. The rest of the sludge? Recycle for next season, it's just mud, ash, and likker.

[jb-texshine]

I've had good luck using white shop towels from the auto parts store.the ones that come in the square box.

[Antler24]

I was wondering about filtering as we'll. I've got a very fine steel mesh I can run it through and then I'll try the coffee filters. Hope it works out this is the last gallon of my first batch juan been on oak for 6 months.