Under pressure

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Elmo Peach

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I have just bought a Fermzilla all rounder fermenter with the pressure fittings. I have a spunding value and I am going to "brew" a DME breer (Minute Wheat).

I do not know what I am doing at this point iin regards to pressure fermenting. This is why the DME/partial mash I should be able to put it together in a short time.

I am wondering what PSI to ferment at. I watched Youtube but am still unclear. One fellow just ran a line from the gas fitting into a jar os starsan.

Any advice would help.

It will be a while before I try this. My brew room is now a plant nursery with tomato, cabage, peppers and for ther first time peanuts being started
 
I've fermented under pressure several batches now. Easiest way to do this is set your spunding valve (fitted to the fermenter) to your max and then let the yeast do it's thing. Anything above that level will be vented. I've not (yet) pressurized the fermenter before fitting the valve. I suppose you could set it to 5psi for a base level and set your limit under your fermenter working pressure max. I did some checking early on when I decided to go this route and found a lot of info around not going above 15psi. There are some going above that (20psi or maybe more), but 14-15psi seems to work well.

I would advise fitting your spunding valve setup with a way to get the outlet into a container of StarSan. I bought some 8oz plastic jars that I drilled the lid on and used some PTC fittings to route the CO2 into. This makes it a closed system (jar is now the airlock) ensuring nothing goes in the out port.

FYI, I've been using adapted sanke kegs for this. High pressure tolerance, built in handles and zero light penetration risk (plus having them on hand) made it an easy choice. I now have some conicals on order and look forward to using those. I have zero need to look inside at the fermenting beer while it's going.
 
If you aren’t sure you want to leap into pressure fermenting you can leave the valve set for a very low amount (I set mine for about 5psi) and let it act more like an air lock until you are ready to brew beers under pressure just make sure you close the valve when you are ready to cold crash and put some CO2 to account for the vacuum
 
I have a mini fridge to control fermentation temperature so I am not really that concerned with the benefits of pressure fermenting. The real benefit for me is that I can then pressure transfer to my keg and thus avoid any exposure to O2. This is really important for beers with lots of late and cold addition hops like NEIPAs where oxygen can turn them brown and provide off flavors in a jiffy. Keeping O2 away from any beer post fermentation is a good idea anyway.
 
I've been enjoying the faster carbonation times, lower headspace requirements, and (as just mentioned above) far less O2 risk, with pressure fermentation. Plus, fermenting temperature is less of a concern. Since going to pressure fermentation I've filled to less than a gallon of headspace without any blowoff tubing needed.

For adding hops into fermenter, I'm going to make a CO2 purged hop dump setup soon. I have almost everything needed already. Just need to order a pressure release valve to fit to the TC cap along with a gas port (have the cap and ball lock fittings already). Just need to drill the cap and bring the needed parts to my TIG welding buddy.

During the transfer, yesterday, from fermenter, I only needed to add CO2 to push after a few gallons had been moved.
 
food for thought - Fermenting under pressure also reduces ester creation. if you want the beer to be more yeast expressive - consider fermenting under 5PSI ~ 2 or 3 PSI. Going to 5+ will start to reduce these esters and can make certain traits in some styles difficult to achieve.

with that being said - usually around 5-8 PSI to counter lack of temp control.
 
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