Pressure Fermentation and American Pale Ales

[johndan]

I've spent a couple hours chasing down info about pressure fermentation (both here and on the wider web) but wanted to check my interpretation: I'm getting ready to brew a pale ale (a cranberry American IPA from Dick Cantwell's IPA book--recipe here). Fermenting under pressure wouldn't really benefit a brew like this, correct? I have a fermentation chamber so I can keep it at the normal fermentation and conditioning temps. If it's relevant, I'm using A07 yeast.

 

[Elric]

Pressure ferment will be good to help keep the hop aromas in. The only place where a pressure ferment hinders instead of helps (not counting yeasts that don't do well under pressure like some saison strains) is when you have a beer where you really want the yeast esters to be dominant. If you are doing a pale ale with a clean yeast, go for a pressure ferment. If you are planning one with a yeast with noticeable esters, ferment at regular pressure. Since Chico is a clean yeast strain I say go for the pressure and see how you like it!

 

[Vale71]

Pressure fermentation is for when you want to do lagers faster at higher temps. There is no advantage in fermenting an ale at standard ale temps as fermentation will actually take longer and the resulting profile will usually be very disappointing.

The thing with "keeping the hop aromas in" is just a myth. Target pressure will be reached in no time at the beginning of fermentation and from that point on the spunding valve will vent the same amount of excess CO2 as when doing a standard no-pressure fermentation, so any CO2 scrubbing of aromas will be identical in both scenarios.

 

[johndan]

Thanks for the replies. I think I might skip the spunding valve this time because I've never brewed this recipe before. Might be an interesting experiment to wait and try the valve with a recipe that's more familiar to see what the differences are.

 

[marc1]

Vent the gas from your fermenter to your keg, and put the spunding valve at very low pressure on the keg.
You'll have a nice co2 purged keg to closed transfer into.
You can also increase the pressure when it is almost done fermenting and you'll have your beer mostly carbed when you're done.

 

[johndan]

Thanks for the tip. That was part of the rationale for purchasing the spunding valve but I hadn't looked into the specifics of how to do it.