Hi, I am very new to brewing. I started with a Beer Machine (I can hear the chuckles from here) and got some good results after a bit of experimentation. I have also started brewing ciders and fruit juices using oz-tops, so I got to thinking. Why cant I use a simmilar process to oz-tops to force carbonate beer. I started by pooring of 1 litre of a fresh brew into a PET bottle and fittinga 'medium' oz-top. To my great surprise it worked. I have now converted a 25 litre drum to have a screw on oz-top fitting with the intention of trying the same principal. Can anyone tell me if this is destine for failure or not ? I dont want to go wasting 25lt of a perfectly good brew (I could never forgive myself) so being the very green brewer that I am i thought I should ask some people who would know. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
Natural Forced Carbonation of beer
- Thread starter jsc370
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
chickypad
lupulin shift victim
Had to google oztops because I had no idea what that was. My question is how are you going to dispense the beer from your 25 liter drum? And how will you keep it carbonated? Unless you're planning to drink the whole thing in a very short time.
Also not quite sure why you'd need those special caps. Presumably you are only carbonating in this vessel, not fermenting right? So you add the correct amount of sugar and you don't need or want to vent anything.
Also not quite sure why you'd need those special caps. Presumably you are only carbonating in this vessel, not fermenting right? So you add the correct amount of sugar and you don't need or want to vent anything.
Well my thought was to ferment in the container with the oz-top as a pressure relief valve. It will maintain a psi of 60-70 which should be enough to force carbonate at room temperature? And then I shouldn't need secondary fermentation. I was then going to refrigerate and bottle after it settles and clears? I am probably not on the right track.
MotorcycleMatt
Well-Known Member
How do you dispense the beer? I would want to get it off the trub before i was serving it.
You dont really need a secondary unless you are adding other things to your beer (fruit, oak, etc.) I have dry hopped in primary.
Really if you are going to end up bottling the batch, just batch prime it with sugar and be done with it, its simple that way. No need to reinvent the wheel on this.
You dont really need a secondary unless you are adding other things to your beer (fruit, oak, etc.) I have dry hopped in primary.
Really if you are going to end up bottling the batch, just batch prime it with sugar and be done with it, its simple that way. No need to reinvent the wheel on this.
chickypad
lupulin shift victim
Okay, so you're talking about fermenting under pressure. Some commercial breweries do this (and some homebrewers too), but I'm pretty sure it's usually in 15 psi and under range and toward the end of primary fermentation. I think the idea is to save time by combining the fermenting and carbing processes - I've never had the desire to experiment with this so that's about all I can say. Except that 60-70 psi sounds really high and I don't know what that would do to the yeast.
I'm not quite understanding your goal - it seems to me a waste to bulk carbonate then transfer the whole batch to bottles for storage. How would you get the already carbed beer into bottles, siphon? I think you're better off looking into a keg system so you can dispense and store with your carbonation vessel (keg), and then fill bottles from there when you want a few.
Oh and either way, you don't need a secondary. You can go straight from primary to bottles (or keg).
EDIT - slow typist, Matt already pointed this out.
I'm not quite understanding your goal - it seems to me a waste to bulk carbonate then transfer the whole batch to bottles for storage. How would you get the already carbed beer into bottles, siphon? I think you're better off looking into a keg system so you can dispense and store with your carbonation vessel (keg), and then fill bottles from there when you want a few.
Oh and either way, you don't need a secondary. You can go straight from primary to bottles (or keg).
EDIT - slow typist, Matt already pointed this out.
tektonjp
Well-Known Member
I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. There's a very long thread here on fermenting under pressure. Same thing. You will have to get creative on serving. You should be able to move your chilled carbonated beer easily to pet bottles for smaller servings.
