Five tips for fermentation (from a pro!) | The Craft Beer Channel

hello beer geeks i'm super excited to say that i am at the willy wonka factory of homebrew which is the amazing malt miller who have been so helpful with my crafty journey particularly over the last uh last 12 months with the amount of homebrew that we've been doing during lockdown and i'm also with one of our collaborators with whom we made the monstrosity that was our pumpkin spice latte and this is andy from elusive thanks for coming on i really like that beer so we are down at montmartre i've been filming with andy making some homebrewing videos for camera which you can watch there will be a link below for that but with the amazing minds behind the camera and the amazing mind in front of it i thought it'd be a great opportunity to answer some of the questions that we get in the comments of every homebrew video we do so this is our top five tip series and this time we're talking fermentation and of course dry hopping [Music] so one of the things i learned really quickly when i started homebrewing seriously was that probably the most important part of the whole brewing is the fermentation like you can do all the great work that you want to in the mash and the boil but if the temperature's wrong the yeast choice was wrong something goes wrong with that yeast and it's not happy you can ruin the entire beer and i think that a lot of people are quite naive when they get into homebrewing and don't think about the fermentation thing i've done the brew day smashed it so much happens afterwards um we get lots of questions about how to make sure there's a there's a good ferment um one of the ones that i've learned really helps is is using nutrients uh which i'd never really considered before what are these nutrients and what are they doing yes so the nutrients that help him create the ideal uh conditions for the yeast to grow and ferment so yeah it's different um compounds and um minerals so it's just sort of foods for the east and you can just buy that from your hair things like zinc and so on that help the yeast get going and get get started right and when it comes to big beers that's really important but also so is pitching the right amount of use that is the one thing like pitching the right amount of viable yeast is the one thing like those that first day or two of fermentation is the most important get off to a good start and you you're laughing right so a sluggish start could could present issues further down the line definitely yeah a nice look like a sluggish star chlorophenol is the main one you get where everything smells of chlorine weirdly uh yeah that's normally down to a sluggish start right and how would you know that you're pitching the right amount like if you're a home brewer i guess we're talking how many packs so for you know session four five six percent you might get away with you know the standard size of use pack but beyond that you need to start with yeah like there's a great online thing mr multi-years calculator have a look at that so that you feed in your original gravity of your work and the parameters from the use and it tells you how much you used to pitch how many packets if it's dried or the volume if it's liquid yeah you might want to look at for a big higher gravity work looking at a starter to take your smack pack or your sachet create a little starter and grow that before you pitch it into your work and that just means it's going to kick off and be healthy almost from the start exactly one of the most difficult things i think for homebrews is finding a place to ferment and a temperature to prevent that's right for that yeast so what what tips have you got for people that maybe don't have full fermentation control or maybe can't keep it in a dark place how do they make sure that they get the best from their beer what i used to do when i started having to have any temperature control you should just ferment with the seasons so in the summer bruce saisons where you don't mind if it's warm the east loves it uh in the autumn spring brewing also need a kind of a room temperature 20 degree vibe sit in the corner in your dining room or wherever and uh yeah use the conditions of the environment to support the yeast right and you can get products as well that will help it stay slightly at the temperature that you need to be like you can get jackets or you could use yeah you get plates that you sit on or if it's in the winter you can wrap it in a towel and try and keep it warm use your thermometer to work out where in the house is right um yeah i see a lot of people put their fermenters next to radiators and to me that seems mad because while it might be the right temperature while the radiator is on what you're creating is yeah a lot of variants which a lot of yeast don't like so yeah yeah so it's finding the most consistent spot and if if you can't find a dark place covering it particularly if it's a hoppy beer because light strike can could take minutes it can if you if you're using glass damage on in particular yeah get those wrapped and covered and keep the light out right something you really want to talk about in this video was sanitation tips so we've all had infected batches and sometimes struggle to find said infection as to what's causing it what's some tips you know is it taking everything apart each time yeah like definitely like if we we've got an f in front of us here um you want to unscrew that tap and give that a good clean out you cannot over sanitize like put all your time and effort into when you start homebrewing get your sanitation regime down get it sorted yeah so as soon as you're coming off the boil everything from that point you want to know that it's come apart it's been cleaned and it's been put back together with clean hands yeah get it nice and i mean heat and contact time are your friends for cleaning so get some boiling water for example run that through everything soak everything nice and hot and then sanitize with a off-the-shelf product like star sand or similar get everything nice and sanitized ready for your work and you can deal with that during the boil right now i feel like we're going to slightly disagree on something which is about dry hop timings okay so what what do you think about the biotransformation edition so what at the peak crossing that's being used in these new england beers do you see much of that effect of adding those hops in yes we do particularly maintaining haze we've played around with um in fact dry hopping on transfer so hops go into the fe before the work through to dry hopping at high crowns and and we played around and yeah get the getting hops in nice and early definitely contributes to a more stable haze and you haven't found any grassy aromas from being sat on those hops no we're not doing uh too much of the addition at that point most of the edition goes in late and a nice short contact time but it's just an addition maybe around 10 20 of the dry help goes in as part of that buyer transformation edition so if you're hopping early you hop light just to make sure you get a bit by transformation but the bulk of it is much shorter contact time like what i do 48 yeah three three days four days max i'd say right okay and at what temperature are you doing those operations so we don't crop and reuse our yeast elusive so we're doing them at ambient so fermentation finishes around 19 20 degrees dry helps in at that point 24 36 hour rest check gravity start to chill okay because there's this risk of a thing called hop creep where uh the yeast might break down some of the hops and start and produce something that's fermentable again and you can kick off fermentation so well you just give it time to we give it time so we say we're not cropping our yeast so we'll do that ambient where the yeast is still happy and active and if it's gonna creep let it creep let it rest and then crash it afterwards yeah okay so in our new england video that we did with verdant uh instead of doing that we dropped it down below 15 degrees so there was no fermentation and then you add the hops and cold crash and and leave it for about 40 48 hours so both of those ones both of those methods will end up with hopefully no diacetyl or anything like that but if you can't cold crash then it's about giving it the time to make sure that that's not gonna happen yeah let that creep happen and let the diet clean up and then move on so like i said fermentation is definitely the most important part of the homebrew process i think or rather it's the point where most homebrews go wrong if you if you're having issues with your homebrew it's quite likely it's not happened on the brew day it's happened since so i hope that really helps if you've got any questions please please do drop them in the comments and if i don't know the answer hopefully andy will and he'll get an email from me we've got loads of amazing hobo content all over the channel there's playlists coming up now there's specific videos coming up now and of course our video with andy parker where we uh we threw all the rules out the window and made a pumpkin spice latte cheers [Music] you

Channel: The Craft Beer Channel

Views: 21,370

Keywords: craft beer, beer review, real ale, homebrew, homebrewing, beer documentary, cooking, recipes

Id: iAzXTJE9V9Q

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021