Closed-system pressurized fermentation technique!

mb2696 said:

I'm interested in doing this and am wondering if anyone can comment on the extent of ester reduction? Are we talking major suppression or barely detectable or what?

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I've brewed the same beer (Irish Red) both ways with Pacman (mutated 1056) and there is a noticeable difference in ester production. I've found that non-pressurized fermentation at 60F is equivalent in taste to 64F pressurized fermentation (1psi - 12 psi over 4 days) for that particular yeast strain.

The first pressurized batch was fermented at 60F and it developed diacetyl, so I had to do a 48hr rest at 68F. There was a very slight hint of diacetyl after the rest, but you really had to look for it. Fermenting at 64F resolved the problem with no increase in esters.

You'll need to experiment with your yeast strain at various temperatures and pressures to fine tune the product. But yes, there is a noticeable reduction in esters.

lamarguy said:

I've brewed the same beer (Irish Red) both ways with Pacman (mutated 1056) and there is a noticeable difference in ester production. I've found that non-pressurized fermentation at 60F is equivalent in taste to 64F pressurized fermentation (1psi - 12 psi over 4 days) for that particular yeast strain.

The first pressurized batch was fermented at 60F and it developed diacetyl, so I had to do a 48hr rest at 68F. There was a very slight hint of diacetyl after the rest, but you really had to look for it. Fermenting at 64F resolved the problem with no increase in esters.

You'll need to experiment with your yeast strain at various temperatures and pressures to fine tune the product. But yes, there is a noticeable reduction in esters.

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Lamarguy,
So do you believe that the low temp in conjunction with the pressure was the cause for the increased Diacetyl. I understand the ester suppression idea, but not really the diacetyl production.

More Pressure = Less esters
Lower Temp = more Diacetyl? I'm not sure I fully understand this reaction.

Thanks

aarondrich said:

So do you believe that the low temp in conjunction with the pressure was the cause for the increased Diacetyl.

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Yes, it's a combination of temperature and top pressure. Low temperature slows yeast metabolism and top pressure reduces biomass production (yeast growth). If either condition occurs, the yeast may be unable to consume the diacetyl produced during normal fermentation.

If you haven't already read it, this post covers the primary benefits/tradeoffs.

I use pac man for my ales and I'll be doing a pressure ferment with temp control. what are your psi settings and schedule through fermentation? If you've already posted this please let me know and I'll search for it. I'm really just following other people's direction at this point until I get a few batches done this way.

flananuts said:

I use pac man for my ales and I'll be doing a pressure ferment with temp control. what are your psi settings and schedule through fermentation? If you've already posted this please let me know and I'll search for it.

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Scroll up and check out this post.

I find myself fermenting and conditioning ales for 2 - 3 weeks with a generic pressure schedule:

1. Day 1 - 1 PSI
2. Day 2 - 2 PSI
3. Day 3 - 6 PSI
4. Day 4 - 9 PSI
5. Day 5+ - 12 PSI

The low pressure (1 - 2 PSI) for the first 48 hours is to allow for normal yeast growth. After that, crank it up.

Lamarguy, you are super quick! I was just coming back to remove the post because I found it, and there you are with the answer. I think I caught that you also ferment at 64 degrees until cold crashing at or near freezing.

Quick question on dry hop additions and pressure fermentation. What do you guys do in order to dry hop but still want to benefit from pressure fementation. My process below.... sound good?

I just took my gravity sample after 4 days of fermentation. I was at 1.02 at 69 degrees from 1.052. My target FG is 1.013 or so with pacman yeast. Time to add dry hop addition. I opened up the fermenter and added in my hops. After that I hooked up my c02 to my rig and purged/re pressurized to 13 psi. My spunding valve is set at 13lbs and the pressure dropped to about 12.5 psi. I'll check the pressure tonight when I get home from work.

What are things I should look for or potentially watch out for through the next 7 days of dry hop before I cold crash?

What are things I should look for or potentially watch out for through the next 7 days of dry hop before I cold crash?

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Maybe a little OT but ideally you'd like to cold-crash and get the yeast to settle out as much as possible before dry hopping (maybe even use gelatin on it too). The hop oils cling to just about everything so the less 'stuff' there is for them to cling to, the better. EDIT: you can then raise the temp back up to room temp for the dry-hopping.

I agree with Spanish, only I would add dry hops to a purged secondary keg and counter pressurize transfer to it after doing my clearing and settling in my fermenter-keg. Another step, but cleaner beer in doing it. Also, a benefit is you can taste the second keg and transfer to your final keg when you are at the flavor level you want from your dry hops.

Or you could "Randal" in a filter (counter-pressure) with hops on your way to your final keg. Don't know how many more hops you would need for this technique to equal the number of days vs. dry hopping in the typical manner.

Those are both interesting points and I'll have to think about that. I'll let you know if I notice any issues with this. Since this was a 10 gallon batch in a half keg, I'm going to crash cool in a week, transfer into purged cornies with gelatin in the kegs, and then get this baby on tap.

Groovy! Let us know how it turns out.

Hey-

This little thing is kinda interesting. Only reason I'm posting about it here is that it seems it's a pressure ferment table top device:

http://cgi.ebay.com/OneDerBrew-HOME...ultDomain_0&hash=item4ceecf8f28#ht_859wt_1167

Funny- looks like a 70's Christmas gift like a salad shooter.

Anyways, I'm about 2 weeks or so away from joining the sanke pressure ferment party too. Can't wait.

I think I'm gonna start with WortMongers method of only shooting for about 7 PSI and force carb it the rest. My ferm chamber temps are spot on, so I don't expect I couldn't try it the other way too. I just don't want to risk any diacetyl in my first beer on the new rig.

Update on my Summit Pale Ale in pressure fermentation(well, let's call it second stage ferm this time). My freezer that I bought on craiglsist which worked well when I picked up would not get cold. After all the 4 letter sailor themed words were out, I opted to just use a standard airlock on the keg in my basement. Temps were probably in the upper 60's to low 70's in primary using pac man yeast. I wasn't too worried because all my beers I've brewed to date were done the same and they all were consumed with praise by my neighbors and co workers.

Once primary was done I attached the spunding setup and ratcheted up to 12psi and fermented for another 2 weeks, until my FG wasn't changing anymore. I loved taking sanitary gravity samples.

WARNING-If you use the push on fittings, be very careful to not move them while under pressure. Otherswise, like me, you'll have at least a quart of beer everywhere until you plug the can with you finger, and dump the pressure.

Anywhoo, beer has been on tap now for two weeks and it's huge hit. I think my dry hop additions might have been too much because my beer is probably higher on the IBU's than planned. I especially like the vienna addition I did to give the beer more malt profile and balance to the borderline IPA IBU's my pale ale recipe had. If the gelatin pulled some of the hop oils out of suspension when in the keg, it's probably a good thing. This is SWMBO's beer that I want to drink too and I'm very happy drinking it.

I have to say I read the entire thread, very impressive. I am trying to get into natural carbing in a corny from the primary and still have a few questions, even after that reading it all.

I purchased the Morebeer pressure relief spunding valve and it only goes up to 15 psi, so I wont have a way to monitor the carbing. I was planning to transfer from the primary to corny at the 4-6 point before FG and just let it carb at RT. Question is, now I put it in my kezzer and start to cool toward 35F, I will have to wait a few days to get below 15 psi to measure? How do exactly "dial in" a pressure without overcarbing during the days of adjustment, and how not to relief too much pressure as it continues to cool? If it set the pressure to, say 12 psi before its at 35F and it is only at 45F then I miss the CO2 volume. I realize what I really needed was a 30psi gauge and relief valve, hindsight 20-20.

Thx Guys

By the way, how about a paintball cylinder for the CO2 trap.

WM uses a 60 and that's what I'm getting. He's the law around these parts. Eyep.

i've only done this a few times now and havent yet cooled while waiting for it to naturally carb, but i'd say 2 things:
1. overcarbing is better than undercarbing. you can always just release the pressure slowly to get back down to desired carb levels.
2. in the cooled environment you'll only want probably about 12 psi, +-. Even with a 30 or 60 psi gauge, you'd have detached it and not really be monitoring it in the cooler, so yes, just let it go a few days until it's cool and nearing the desired temp, then check the levels again.

With this method you probably won't reach the exact carb levels at first anyway, so a good co2 tank might be necessary. If it's low, just put some more co2 in there.

to be sure, you're putting your keg into your cooler after you're done your fermentation right? You want to leave it at the same temp, or even up to 5*F higher, for those last few points to complete ferm and to allow for diacetyl to be consumed.

I hope this isn't too much of a tangent but I had an idea about Faux Beechwood Aging in cornies and thought I'd link it in here. The myth about cornies being too slim/tall and the yeast not having enough surface area has been pretty much debunked but I figger if AB goes to all the trouble it must have some merit.

I finally got around to a pressurized fermentation! And a special one at that. I used a novel techniques to isolate the yeast during fermentation so I could ferment, carb and serve all from one keg!

I posted all the details here:

4 day old Wheat beer on tap! - without lots of yeast!

Wow.. I just spent a couple hours reading everything and I'm very impressed and interested. I had been planning to ferment in a corny with a regular airlock and then close it up near the end for some natural carb. This technique is really interesting and I might have to go shopping soon.

One thing you guys had mentioned a little while back was having one spunding valve to control multiple fermenting kegs. I was thinking about this and how to rig it up but there is a problem (I think) I thought of. Wouldn't you have issues if your kegs were at different points in their fermentation? From what I understand you are changing the relief pressure throughout the fermentation process and unless you were starting all batches on the same day then one setting for all the beers wouldn't work. I very well be wrong since I haven't actually tried any of this stuff, just read about it theoretically.

Amazing work though! I'll definitely be following this thread.

IslandMike said:

One thing you guys had mentioned a little while back was having one spunding valve to control multiple fermenting kegs. I was thinking about this and how to rig it up but there is a problem (I think) I thought of.

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I am in the process of doing just that. I am waiting to test my solution before I post much about it. It's not really for the same purpose, since I ferment in a Sanke, but would work for the same beer in 3 corny's too.

Basically, I'm using a 3 port gas manifold without check valves that terminates in a corny post (rather than a barb) so I can remove my spunding valve from the whole assembly and put it on my main fermenter. It's important it doesn't have check valves because it's operating in reverse.

I thought of doing the same thing as SankeyPankey. Are you connecting your spunding valve to the manifold? i imagine that's what i'd do, and have shutoff valves for closing off any of the 3 ports that are not in use. I find myself fermenting multiple kegs at once and kicking myself for only being able to do one under pressure.

Great looking setup! simple, yet efficient.

Yes. My Sanke fermenter has corny posts on it, so I have my spunding valve on a ball lock and can just switch it to that manifold when I want. Since I naturally carb in my Sanke, I am not using it for fermenting in 3 different kegs at once like mentioned, but there are a couple other uses for this thing too... Force carbing 3 kegs at once as well as 3 keg parallel counter pressure filling from one Sanke.... but I have to test the last one before I can recommend it.

The main suppliers (kegconnection etc.) can get you the fittings that are barbed with shut-off minus the check valves. That's what I got, although if you just have barbed fittings they would work since the ball locks are effectively shutoff valves. I just got shutoffs for the keg filling aspect.

I would think though, that getting any sort of consistency from fermenting 3 kegs at once at a group determined pressure level would be difficult unless you were fermenting the same exact beer, I guess brewed to ~15 gal, and pitched perfectly the same per keg, so then maybe pitched in the kettle.

Otherwise, there would be one keg more than the others that just takes off. If that, then I would think that waiting till more towards the end of primary to cap the fermenters for partial carbonation might work better since most of your yeast character is there already.

But then, it begs the question: if you are going to brew 15 gal of the same beer and ferment it all at once at the same pitching rate.... why are you not fermenting in a Sanke?

SankePankey said:

Force carbing 3 kegs at once as well as 3 keg parallel counter pressure filling from one Sanke

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Creative and I like it. Do you think that you could connect a couple Cornys with finished (but uncarbonated) beer to a keg fermenting at a high rate and use the excess CO2 produced to carbonate those kegs? The problem I could see is that at room temp the pressure would have to be near 30 psi and would stress the yeast in the fermentor too much. You could always have the finished kegs sitting in a keggerator or something so they were cold, however it probably isnt worth all the effort since you could have just carbed them at the end of their fermention cycle anyway.

Gah, waste of writing since I answered all my own thoughts lol.

IslandMike said:

Creative and I like it. Do you think that you could connect a couple Cornys with finished (but uncarbonated) beer to a keg fermenting at a high rate and use the excess CO2 produced to carbonate those kegs? The problem I could see is that at room temp the pressure would have to be near 30 psi and would stress the yeast in the fermentor too much. You could always have the finished kegs sitting in a keggerator or something so they were cold, however it probably isnt worth all the effort since you could have just carbed them at the end of their fermention cycle anyway.

Gah, waste of writing since I answered all my own thoughts lol.

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Yeah, I guess a main point of pressurized ferment is that its easy (among other things). You also risk doing something to that finished beer, unless you have an ample trap for the liquid that would travel into it from the spunding valve (and any nasties if you have an infected beer). Risky.


In my setup, I have a 3 gal corny that I use as a starter vessel. I then push the starter into the Sanke w/ CO2 and it stays there to act as the yeast collection device. I put my spunding valve on my 3 gal either to act as just the airlock (at 0.5 PSI... works well) or to get pressurized ferments in the Sanke by cranking up the PRV. I can hop scotch the spunding valve off of the Sanke, the 3 gal corny, or the manifold. Either way.

I'm about ready to use a 5 gallon sanke as a starter/kraeusen vessel. Just seemed like a great idea I just never actually went through with. Glad it is working for you so well. Just finishing up a lager with my newest spunding valve. Looks like I have a leak in my new valve though

I haven't used them all enough times to call it 'working so well'. I have a few kinks left to work out, but it will be working well soon enough. I will certainly post when I have worked the kinks out. It's a little premature right now since batch #1 is in primary still.

I'd definitely use something you can pick up and shake the hell out of to break up the yeast for travel up the dip tube. The 3 gal works great for that. But, I left a bit of yeast (so, underpitched) behind on my first brew with it- about an inch think actually. It wont happen the second time!!

I just dunked the closed corny into a water bath to chill down to pitch. Worked pretty well, except it wasted a lot of water. I didn't really have a chiller routine setup that I could chill 2 gal. 2 Gal doesn't even trip my float switch on the brewhouse, so I did it on the stove and will have to work out a better chilling routine. That worked OK for now though.

I was thinking of using a system where instead of having an air lock on the primary fermenter I would tube the off gas to the future, but empty, secondary fermenter and put an air lock on that. If pressure builds up, the CO2 would escape fro the secondary. In this way I would be able to purge the secondary without buying CO2 equipment.
When I transfer to the secondary, I would simply have to siphon in a closed way and as the secondary filled they CO2 would flow back to the empty primary.

Now I am think that the problem with this may be that there will be other gases produced other than CO2 and that these gases might remain dissolved in the beer if the air system in the fermentation units were coupled and closed.
1) Are there other gases produced during fermentation? H2S sometimes, I am guessing.
2) Are they in enough quantities to cause problems.

Ed

Just wanted to say that my second A.G. batch ever was a closed pressure ferment using the current 'best option' fittings on this thread and it performed flawlessly. Its a blast to do it this way. You can taste the beer with the more appropriate level of acidity (carbonic) than flat, let alone the ease of sampling without any BYO gas. Also, you can so easilyend up with basically equalized beer by dialing in the right relief.

My Wit has been fermenting for almost 3 weeks and I have gradually risen the PSI to ~30 PSI (@71 degrees) and it just has a few points to go. I had hella problems (like my mash element blew out) during the brew process, but its ending OK.

Also, the spunding valve is so useful for other things. Me likee.

EDIT: And I forgot to mention the obvious- Thank you Wort Monger et al.

OK guys, thought I'd share this private message with you in this thread because it is the chief piece of information that hinted to me this was possible. I never got to read it except in someone else's summary. This drove me towards other information in my research which was greatly appreciated by me. Here goes guys,

TeriFahrendorf said:

Hi WortMonger,

Slow to realizing that homebrewers have been seeking copies of my Closed System Presurized Fermentation for years, I have just posted it online here, http://www.terifahrendorf.com/Closed-Pressurized-Fermenatation.pdf

Thought you might want to know since I saw you had a thread on the topic.

Cheers,
Teri

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Thank you so much Teri!!!:rockin: Now I have two female brewing idols, that's not necessarily a second place for you Yooper

And another one!

TeriFahrendorf said:

Hi John,

Thank you for the kind words. You may find some of my other previously published works useful. I try to put all of them on my website, www.terifahrendorf.com. If you think of one I wrote that is not up there (or linked to there), please let me know and I'll dig it up and publish it. Information is useless unless it is shared!

Cheers, Teri

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More information for the masses!!! This chick rocks!

Ok, I am jumping on the CCP wagon. My first keg is in the ferm, ala lamarguy style.

Good luck. No pressure!

LooyvilleLarry said:

Ok, I am jumping on the CCP wagon. My first keg is in the ferm, ala lamarguy style.

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You're gonna love it! Before too long, you're gonna have that David Bowie song bass line playing in your head.

OK, finally I get to tap the first lager ever made on my home system. I have brewed so many ales, and love them but.... I love this soft, delicate, lowly hopped, highly carbonated, almost Stella Artois I just brewed. Man, it took forever on this one but it turned out A-OK. I'm sticking to ales for my majority from now on after this one. Foamed at the first even with 7 foot of beer line, but I let the keg serve itself until it hit about 10 psi. Now the lines are cold and I have it cranked up to 12 psi. Boy am I getting pissed tonight!!! Yee-Fricken-Hawwwwww Beeeeer!

Well, I have been keeping a close eye on this one. I am following lamarguys 2-2-6-9-12 and I am on day 6. I have 70% attenuation and looks like some good carbonation. This was a 1.059 APA and tastes good. It is nice being able to leave it in the keg until saturday, knowing I can put it on tap.

Yes, it will be much better in another couple of weeks, but it is certainly quaffable now

APA is where I figured the sweet spot was for this technique. It is my favorite beer, and my favorite to brew this way. The lager is excellent though. I do wish my spunding valve hadn't failed and I lost all the carb at the end of primary

I finally got the parts I needed to get this working, AKA I finally found the Sanke tap that was hidden at my buddies house so I could use my 1/2 bbl keg to ferment. I was wondering, however, if anyone tried this with wine? Or even Ed's Apfelwein? I wonder if this will speed up the process or help with quicker aging with wine as well? I imagine although all yeasts are slightly different, some basic characteristics are the same and that slight pressure while fermenting will lead to the same advantages.

Any experiences in regard to this?

Thanks,

Mike

IslandMike said:

I finally got the parts I needed to get this working, AKA I finally found the Sanke tap that was hidden at my buddies house so I could use my 1/2 bbl keg to ferment. I was wondering, however, if anyone tried this with wine? Or even Ed's Apfelwein? I wonder if this will speed up the process or help with quicker aging with wine as well? I imagine although all yeasts are slightly different, some basic characteristics are the same and that slight pressure while fermenting will lead to the same advantages.

Any experiences in regard to this?

Thanks,

Mike

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This is an interesting proposition. I'm not sure that you really want to though because 1)wine is not usually carbonated 2)some small fruity esters usually is not a bad thing, and 3) IIRC wine needs to breathe during the initial stages

If you wanted to do it, it would likely be only the first part of the fermentation .

And I doubt that anything will beat time for aging.

LooyvilleLarry said:

Well, I have been keeping a close eye on this one. I am following lamarguys 2-2-6-9-12 and I am on day 6. I have 70% attenuation and looks like some good carbonation. This was a 1.059 APA and tastes good. It is nice being able to leave it in the keg until saturday, knowing I can put it on tap.

Yes, it will be much better in another couple of weeks, but it is certainly quaffable now

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I just wanted to let everyone know how this turned out. After 8 days on the above schedule, it dryed out to 1.016 (71% attenuation) and is clear as a bell. In fact, most people liked it more than the same recipe brewed 3 months ago!

The last two days, I dropped it to 31 to let the yeast drop out.

I am very happy with these results.