3 days to FG 15 psi fermentation pressure!!

[Owly055]

I went to town yesterday and visited my friend who owns a microbrewery........ I got there at a bad time...... total panic. The grain mill motor had burned out and he was in the middle of doughing in... rushing around to get another motor hooked up...... Wrong rotation, he flipped it around and laid it on a bucket with various unconventional methods to keep it in alignment and keep the belt tight. With the dough in done, I was rewiring the motor to turn the correct direction and putting a decent cord on it when there was a huge rumble, like a fart that wouldn't quit....... panic again!!

One of his 15 barrel fermenters had blown the gasket on the top lid. He scrambled up a rickety ladder, opened the lid and stuffed the gasket back into position, and we hooked up the blow off line into a 5 gallon bucket of water...... actually a stack of several to get the height right so the end of the hose was adequately submerged......... the CO2 blowing off was incredible, like a large air compressor... one of those engine driven ones they use to run jack hammers!! It wasn't huge bubbles, just a steady blast....... You couldn't keep water in the bucket without having a hose running.......... Needless to say, there's a concrete floor and floor drains.

His normal MO is to ferment with 15 psi pressure...... He was now fermenting with no pressure, just using a blow off. (Fermenting with 1056). We got to talking about it, and he informed me that it took 3 days to FG with 15 psi (no secondary fermentation), but 7 days with no pressure. Just the opposite of what I'd expected.

I recall reading about fermenting under pressure here before, but the consensus seemed to be that it slowed fermentation and stressed the yeast. He pitches very heavily with stater that is shipped Fed-Ex.


Thoughts on this?? I'm now wondering about fermenting in kegs........


H.W.

 

[tally350z]

I have read this before, that fermenting under pressure creates less esters on in the final product. It does stress the yeast out but somehow creates less esters.