Have a somewhat obscure question for anyone blending liqueurs, absinth, etc who may have to deal with unusual sediments. We're just getting started and are still working out a few kinks with the initial production.
My product is a spiced honey liqueur with some colloidal sediments from the botanicals we use in the spice reduction. Essentially we get a gelatinous mass of pectins and other small solids that eventually settles to the bottom of the tank. I can extract the clear top ~90% of the product with no problem, but I'd like to recover as much as I can from the bottom 'sludge', and I'm curious if anyone else has dealt with a similar issue before.
The main issue is that the sediments are colloidal and will quickly gum up most regular filters, at least for what I've used at home (coffee filters, cheescloth, fine mesh strainers). I'm hesitant to drop money on a plate and frame filter just because I don't know how well one of those would work. I'm also a bit worried about 'over filtering' and stripping out some flavors, because the product is pretty viscous to begin with. I'm afraid I don't know the exact micron size we want to filter at either.
I'm leaning towards using a basket-type centrifuge, although those seem to be either designed for waste veggie oil (and generally not food-safe) or crazy expensive with large-scale beverage processing in mind.
My DIY solution is a centrifugal juicer sealed up with food-grade silicone sealant, so we'll see if that pans out or not. I also bought a cheapo plate filter for homebrewing to test the other options. In any case, if y'all have any thoughts, I'd definitely like to hear them! Thanks!