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Microfiltration is an alternative technology to heat pasteurization that can be used to pasteurize beer. Microfiltration uses a set of membranes, usually in the 0.45–0.65 μm range, for filtering bacteria and yeast. Bacteria have a cell size of about 5-10 μm and yeast species have a cell size of about 5–16 μm, while flavor compounds such as phenols are filtered out when using a smaller diameter filter such as 0.2 μm. One study by Bernardi et al. (2019) found that filtration with polyethermide membranes removed around 1-2 IBU, ~30% of yeast-produced phenolic compounds (most polyphenols from hops were not filtered out), and larger tannins (which were only a small portion of the total polyphenol content). The antioxidant activity was largely not impacted. After filtration, the beers were 26%-33% lighter in color, depending on the style of the beer, and were 100% clearer. The filtration that was used, which was 1.2 μm, also produced fully pasteurized beers <ref>[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128152584000135 Microfiltration for Filtration and Pasteurization of Beers. Guilherme dos Santos Bernardi, Jacir Dal Magro, Marcio A. Mazutti, J. Vladimir Oliveira, Marco Di Luccio, Giovani Leone Zabot, Marcus V. Tres. 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-815258-4.00013-5.]</ref>.

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