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I have noticed that many microbreweries centrifuge their beer in order to remove yeast and hops. These machines, e.g. from Alfa Laval, GEA and Andritz, are huge and not something you would have in your kitchen.

Industrial machinery are just too big to have at home.

Is there any products for home use? Can you easily make one?

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  • tie a bottle to a rope and swing it round. IMHO using a centrifuge at home is unnecessary albeit slightly cool brewing geek material. In commercial breweries the time saved can equate to investors money. But at home it is SO much easier to (for example) cold crash or wait a month for the bottle to condition correctly. IMHO, there is more to bottle conditioning than carbonation and clearing. Jan 5, 2018 at 12:33

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A Spinzall culinary centrifuge in continuous mode – fed by a built-in peristaltic pump – could feasibly accomplish this, provided that the compressed volume of gunk in a normal home brewing batch is less than about 500ml (which would fill the open bucket rotor and require a pause to clean it out and re-sterilise).

Incorporating normal home brewing clarifying agents like kieselsol/chitosan would increase the clarity.

I can't speak to oxidation.

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  • Oxidation is a potential problem.
    – Gustav
    Aug 8, 2018 at 8:59
  • It's currently unavailable. What was the last known price?
    – Mołot
    Jan 3, 2019 at 14:38
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In theory, you can make one, and it may be pretty tricky depending on batch size and containers.

did you want to make one for 5gals? or bottles? or some other size?

The hardest part is getting it balanced. if its unbalanced your going to have a disaster waiting to happen, either bearings fail, or the shaft etc.

but the basic build is going to be a disc that spins at a constant speed, some way to balance it, and making it hardy enough to last.

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  • im going to have to change my answer a little since i have to do a little more research, I do like the idea of bottle conditioning and then put all the bottles in a centerfuge to clear them the rest of the way.....just the idea of 50 bottles spinning on a huge contraption seems just fun.
    – jsolarski
    Dec 27, 2017 at 17:16
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    tie 4 bottles to the blades of a ceiling fan and leave overnight.... :0) or put a couple of crates mounted sideways on a childs merry-go-round and spin it for 15 mins!. Jan 5, 2018 at 12:28
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I've not seen any commercial breweries use a centrifuge to clairify beer. They do use a whirlpool tank based on similar but actually different fluid dynamic principles. But isn't applied on finished beer. Filtering or or normal fining is much more efficient even on a commercial scale. There are large centifuges for this but I haven't seen any here in breweries. To make one for home use does seem like an expensive novelty that can get the same results by other means.

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As someone with a liquid nitrogen dewar flask, Polyscience immersion circulator, recirculating chiller, and other high-tech equipment in my kitchen, I do not have a centrifuge and I will likely not have one in this home.

A decent refrigerated centrifuge that can hold 250 mL bottles and spin fast enough to do something is extremely expensive and needs its own 220V breaker. You cannot centrifuge beer bottles, they are not designed to withstand the very significant gravitational loads applied during the process. You would be asking for serious trouble and potentially fatal injury if you were standing next to the centrifuge at the time of a failure.

I would recommend a standard wine filter or if you want to get a bit more sciencey vacuum filtration.

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  • Yes, a laboratory centrifuge might be the only thing that fits. Filling and drain the centrifuge containers might be the work that comes with it.
    – Gustav
    Dec 29, 2017 at 7:55
  • the brewery centrifuge is not the lab one your thinking of. that was my mistake.
    – jsolarski
    Jan 5, 2018 at 15:08
  • The brewery centrifuge is probably much more similar to a "cell saver" device (if you have ever donated blood as "double red" you have seen a similar device), but for a home brewer the cost of such a single-purpose device is prohibitive, not to mention dead space causing loss of your fermented product. At least a refrigerated large volume laboratory centrifuge has other culinary uses, but is unfortunately also cost-prohibitive for the average chef/ brewer.
    – RudyB
    Jan 5, 2018 at 18:27
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You are correct many commercial breweries use centrifuges to clarify their beers, FourPure in the UK are one that comes immediately to mind.

regarding your questions:

1)Is there any products for home use?

You can use filters but there is not really such a thing as a home centrifuge. You could get hold of a lab bench centrifuge, but without sub-gram accurate scales you could end up with a very dangerous walking centrifuge. You can pick these up secondhand.

2)Can you easily make one?

No, not easily for a liquid solid separation centrifuge such as an Alfa Laval. They have to be incredibly finely balanced or they either shake themselves to pieces which can be catastrophic, or they just jam and break.

If you just want sediment out the suspended yeast in a bottle then a hand centrifuge could be made to hasten clearing in bottles. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzb12_BR-8s] but securing beer bottles may be problematic.

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I would think the common house-hold washing machine could be retrofitted for this purpose. I'd start with a new one of course, and "plumb in" beer instead of tap water, and have the "Spin Cycle" drain elsewhere. Maybe incorporate a "Wye-Valve" with photo cell that would automagically switch after the "opaque" lees pass through...

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  • Any plans to make this type of machine. More details are appreciated.
    – Philippe
    Jan 3, 2019 at 14:34

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