What Homebrew Fermentation Should Look Like -CSB Unpasteurized

what your Brew should do today on City studying unpasteurized I always have to get out my TV announcer voice to do these I feel like I used car salesman or something um today we're going to talk about the fermentation process and we're going to simplify things a lot okay and being that this is not necessarily a visual type of thing even though most of you are probably watching it as a video we don't have examples to show we're going to talk about it instead we're going to use our words exactly absolutely um and the reason why we're doing this video is because we've had a lot of comments in our comment section where people were thoroughly confused and we do not blame you if you're new to fermentation it can be a confusing process so we're going to try to help oh guide you to let you know the weird stuff that is happening in that fermentation vessel might actually be exactly what you're looking for yes I'd also like to remind everyone that usually these are unedited meaning everything that we say is actually going to show up in the video or the not to be mentioned type of broadcast that this actually is that we don't want to tell anyone that it actually is because some people are very angry about that type of broadcast enough said or not said all right so number one on our list of the fermentation process and what your Brews should be doing is foam and Bubbles it should be doing both yes okay next I'm just kidding there's there's more to say here um when you mix up a brew you know like when you see us shaking the bejesus out of something we're creating foam right there and that's just various proteins and other materials in the Brew trapping some air and causing a bubble and stacking on top of each other that's really all that is but that's normal and it's gonna happen Don't Fear the foam we say that about the star sand solution it's true on this too it does kind of get in the way there are ways of sort of mitigating it but for the most part give it a few minutes it usually breaks up and goes away it's it's like the head on a beer but it's a really weak head so it doesn't last as long but wow out of context that's really bad this is normally happening at the very beginning of the fermentation process so if your yeast get super happy with the concoction that you gave them they're going to create more foam and that foam makes band upward and outward and Beyond the confines of your fermentation vessel this is not a bad thing this is just a thing that happens sometimes that's why we always say to put your new Brew on a cookie sheet that has edges so that way I'm in a pot if the year really excited bathtub and they go beyond their confines they will be confined and their external confines rather than all over your kitchen floor yes um something else that happens is as that foam goes up and then it starts to break away you will get some that gets left on the sides of the bottle or the side of the fermenter is actually the more appropriate word and that's called a krausen I've been saying a croissant for years because you know I'm not German I'm sorry um so I've been saying it creation but it's actually krausen and it's literally just like dried bubbles it's proteins and things like that it's not harmful in any way some people have thought that they had to scrub it back in or oh no no no just leave it it's fine it's not going to hurt anything your Brew's probably not going to get up there anyway I do tend to give a swirl for the first few days so not a lot of Crossing forms in ours unless it forms after that but it's not harmful in any way that I could find did a little bit of research on that a couple years ago because someone asked me it can be a ble even be various shades of fruit notes if you were using fruit so don't freak out about the Crunchies on the top part of your vessel because that's probably just left over from your phone that said if when you like say you have to punch down fruit or something when you take the lid off if you see that it's all crusted up on the underside of that lid I would probably wash that out and re-sanitize before I apply the lid back just to keep the the uh one-way valve which is your airlock from getting blocked up or potentially having that block up that could cause some problems we've heard of airlocks shooting out and sticking into ceilings and things like that and that just doesn't sound like a good day to me right and so that is the one thing you want to watch out with that foam production is that those those particles those proteins that we talked about can clog up your airlock so if you do see foam coming out of your vessel and out of your airlock you probably want to switch out your airlock to a blow-off tube we have a whole video discussing the the gist of that that's basically a piece of silicone tubing going into a mason jar yeah really simple and that way it's a larger aperture for those gases and sediments to escape thus not clogging up your airlock straighter path once the foam has receded and things are back to normal but were go ahead put a clean new airlock filled with appropriate liquid back on that vessel and you're good to go yeah generally the really active part of a fermentation is only the first few days um four or five days at most we've not seen many that go longer than that as a very active fermentation they'll still you'll still see bubbles in the airlock and you'll still see stuff happening but it's not foaming up and out for like months you know that doesn't happen I did like your little segue into particulates though that was on next on the list she just went right into it didn't even hesitate that was that was it was a beautiful thing smooth that's me you want to be a YouTuber so be on foam we also have Bubbles and Bubbles are different from foam because they're just bubbles they're not foam but foam is made of bubbles it is but not all bubbles are foam there you go see we're talking subsets now so bubbles can come into two different sources and this is both from the fermentation process because fermentation process is the yeast converting the fermentable sugars in your Brew to alcohol and CO2 and various other ascendry elements so the bubbles are that CO2 and the other gases is creating so one especially CO2 mostly CO2 mostly so you can see little tiny bubbles like creeping up the side of your bubbles in your wine Yep this is a good sign this means you have a fermentation that is active in doing its thing so yay team yeah I actually tell people all the time if your airlock isn't active you could just have a bad seal it happens a lot with people using buckets so the trick to look for is Tiny Bubbles coming up the sides and a bucket harder to do thus we like glass plus we can show you in glass much much easier than if we used a big white bucket and go hey look at that there's bubbles inside I can't show you because it's in a big you know opaque bucket but anyway you look for little bubbles coming up the side they're actually the gases from the uh the fermentation happening and they just tend to I don't know why they go up the side I think they go with the middle too it's just you see them on the side a lot easier because you're not looking through four inches of liquid it's kind of Cloudy those side bubbles well then collect at the top creating top bubbles times if there's still there with all the particulate matter we'll create more foam so you see where we're going with that there's a constant cycle of Bubbles and foam and foam and Bubbles and then eventually it subsides and leaves dead foam or crossing it's not dead foam it's just the the particulates that were brought up by the bubbles it's a thing right so stay particulate I think we can move on to section number two which is sediment and this is Windows particulate so that we keep talking about rather than sticking at the top because of the foam fall to the bottom in beer this is called The Troop and wine and I'm going to say in Mead it's called leaves also called lease by me for about four years until 50 000 people told me I was wrong so I started calling it Lee's sometimes I still say lease but you know what I say caramel instead of caramel According to some people too caramel is a place in New York Carmel is a food that's just the way regardless of where you are or who you are something we say is probably going to irritate you yeah and we apologize but it's not meant to be an irritant it's just how we say things just know everybody says things a little bit differently depending on what part of the country and world you are from and how you grew up doesn't make you wrong just makes it different all right so back to that sediment the sediment to be made up of yeast both dead and living yeah so don't discredit that sediment it's also going to be the proteins that settled out from your Brew rather than getting pushed up by those bubbles and then pieces of fruit and right all kinds right so other stuff so this is perfectly normal and the the layers on the bottom can be as small as just a couple of millimeters to a couple of inches yeah it can be rather thick and this all dependent on the ingredients that you used and the yeast that you used and everything and how they're working together this is a mini science experiment ladies and gentlemen and so there are so many variables that we can't tell you definitively how much sediment is going to be in the bottom of your Brew but there's probably going to be some and that's perfectly normal and sometimes it's surprising things that you wouldn't expect to get a lot of sediment from like we have just a little spoiler here we have a cherry juice ferment coming up that was extraordinarily active for like 48 hours and then stopped we haven't checked it yet that's coming soon probably tomorrow but it left in the bottom of a one gallon fermenter about three to four inches of sediment from the we can see from the size now it might just be like you know pushed up the size we can't really tell yet because you know it's dark and we can't see in there I don't have dark vision all right so it's Wednesday at 2PM and that's why we hear alarms going off because that's the thing everybody everywhere in the country has this for one whole minute they warned us about it and I was still shocked because wow that's jarring but it's jarring for a reason because it's an emergency or if they're 15 minutes late too and they want you to be alerted yeah I am now alert very much so didn't even need caffeine for that one all right so we keep paying about another element that we're very end of this video so please keep watching and or listening because one of the most important things that you need to be aware of about the fermentation process we're saving to the very end wow if that wasn't meant to get you to just keep watching I don't know what is all right so the next thing we're going to talk about are Aromas smells and odors coming for your fermentation vessel I would just like to go on record and say one thing if your neighbors can tell that you are Brewing because of the smell you're doing something wrong I have literally had people tell me that they can't Brew in their neighborhood not their apartment in their house because their neighbors can smell it and complained let me just think about that for a moment if that's happening something is being done very very wrong because honestly I can walk into the room that has our fermenters in it and we have eight or ten of them going at once and I can't smell it I can't tell that there's Brewing going on not that we're doing anything wrong it is totally legal for us to do it by the way a lot of people seem to think that it's illegal but it's totally legal it's a different topic for a difference yeah I know I just had to get it in there you know just had to slide that one through but the smells thing if there's a strong smell coming from your Brew something is not right the most common is the the raw yeah I can see this is why it's live the most common is the uh rotten egg I wanted to say raw egg I don't know why I said rotten egg smell it's sulfur and that compound is produced when you don't aerate properly that's the most common way if you don't aerate in the beginning enough the yeast struggle and they produce um I think it's hydrogen sulfide so it gives off that rotten egg smell the good thing is it fades away in time if you give it enough time it goes away it should not permeate your entire house though if it is you really should have aerated that a lot better we've never experienced that even in the brew that we purposefully didn't aerate at all we didn't even mix it we didn't get that sulfuric smell so I from our experience we really don't know where that's coming from or how to help you other than to suggest proper aeration at the beginning maybe some people are just super uber sensitive to Smells I don't know I don't want to Discount somebody's activities but it just seems a little odd we do hear that one more often than you would think um but but I've been visited Vineyards I visited other commercial breweries like beers places I just I don't know it should it should smell sort of pleasant actually it should definitely smell like alcohol once alcohol is present because you're making alcohol you do know that right just just check in you didn't know you might be on the wrong chance and then based on what ingredients you have in it like if you have fruit then it's going to smell like fermenting fruit which to some people isn't a pleasant odor it's like a sickly sweet smell something but it shouldn't be oppressibly uh offensive so no you shouldn't want to gag no and you shouldn't be able smelled from across the room no I literally have to put my nose like right up on the airlock in order to smell anything and even then I have to wait for it to Bubble all right so hopefully that is covered smells and you know that yes your fermentation is going to smell but it just smells so bad that you want to be ill or your neighbors should complain the next one is Clarity and this is highly controversial because we have had the stance from the very beginning of the creation of the channel That Clarity doesn't matter and I want to rephrase that maybe to help out the clarity doesn't matter so much to us if you have your heart set on a crystal clear beverage then by all means use the methods that we provide in various videos on how to clear your Brew so that way you can obtain that goal comma however in our vast infinite not infinite no that's the but in our many years of Brewing we have found that a clear Brew versus a less than clear Brew the flavor is not impacted so we're actually going to do a video testing it's an Aesthetics thing let's be honest it's more than that it actually comes if you think about it okay back in ye olden times right people ate the roughest bread possible just because they used whatever kinds of flowers or grains they could get right well as refining processes became a thing white bread became the good bread the bread that everybody sought to eat even though today we know that white bread was not even as good as those whole grains you know a little bit of sawdust mixed in there it was better for you now we call it artisan bread yeah now it's artisan bread right so I think it's the human psyche we see that clearer brew and think oh that must be better quality it's the same process that makes us think that plus wine makers and you know commercial wine makers and things like that they're always showing off these crystal clear glasses in their commercials and we've been led to believe that that's what a professional good quality wine should look like well that isn't necessarily true and I am still of the belief but we're going to test this that if you are worried more worried about ultimate Clarity then flavor you may be giving some up let me explain that in different words if you have something that's a little cloudy and you are working to make that as gem-like as it can possibly be something is being removed to get it there it's my theory that I'm going to test that you may be maybe may be removing some amount of flavor components to get that ultimate clarity thereby making white bread from whole grain bread more on that later but as far as Clarity goes in this particular topic of conversation Clarity is not something that you really need to stress about unless that's a goal of yours so if your Brew is cloudy that doesn't mean you did something wrong please do not dump a cloudy Brew just because it's cloudy and it can take a lot okay Clarity can happen all on its own okay in most cases it does now I also want to specify what I'm talking about when I say ultimate clarity if it's just a little hazy I have zero issue if it's literally like it looks like um pea soup or like it looks chunky that's not even considered clear too that's not that's not just hazy that needs to be react that's not done okay that that's just not ready what we're talking about is things that like you can see light through it no problem but it has a little bit of a haze to it or even a fairly strong Haze that's what we're talking about is being totally okay when you first mix up a brew and you have it going if it still looks like that after two weeks it's probably not cleared it's just give it more time it can take a while now there are ways of clearing it we have used several we have used gelatin I always want to say glycerin it's gelatin and that worked fairly well it's a little bit of a pain to use I really don't like the setup of it so that's why we only used it once or twice pectic enzyme works great if there's pectin in your Brew if there's no pectin it's not going to work or if you just have a traditional honey Mead and you add pectic enzyme it's not going to clear it because there's no pectin for it to work on Pure Food Grade Bentonite with no extra packing materials is also another one we are going to try it in an upcoming video we we have some it's been sitting there for a long time just never use it and that brings me to what you know comes right back to that final point of a lot of times when we get to the tasting we go oh it's a little hazy and we don't care we move on and it's not laziness we just don't feel that the extra time and extra effort to get it that little bit clearer is going to make that much difference but again we're gonna test this in a video so before everybody jumps all over me in the comment section I know you want to I know I some of you already have you know go back and reread your comment because I've been explaining uh that we are a little harsh because well sometimes people are a little harsh and then they watch more of the video and go oh yeah you guys did answer that oh okay it happens all the time and I get it you know um but we're gonna test some clear versus cloudy brew and see if there's a difference and we we haven't formulated it completely yet but uh we have some pseudo semi-sciences type things that we're planning to do there's also other on various videos feel free to search our YouTube channel you can go right to the little magnifying glass icon into the channel page what you're looking for and if it's there that'll pop up and show you what videos to watch and that will be really helpful for you to find out the information that you're really looking for so beyond Clarity we have our next topic as airlock I think we've already covered airlock Brian is there anything else you can think of that you want to discuss about airlock's Brewing process there's there's a misconception in some of our videos where we show a beginner video showing just like burping the lid and a lot of people seem to think that we're condoning that we're saying oh you can just do this now we're basically saying that for that video if your first time Brewer you're using the plastic jug that it came in and you don't have any other investment in gear it's fine beyond that I would invest the three dollars in an airlock or use a blow-off tube all the time which is basically just an airlock it's just a piece tubing going into mason jar as we talked about before you can use that that's totally fine that is still an airlock in my opinion because when you leave that lid open here's what happens a few things first remember the particulates and the crossing that we were talking about earlier if that gets up there it could clog that and then you get boom if it doesn't it could attract bugs which get in and will infect your brew and ruin it if you know if you come back to your brew and you see a bunch of flies floating in there dump it out it's not safe to consume anymore I just that's not a good idea so that's why I like to use an airlock to make sure that nothing gets in there because um you know that's just kind of gross so airlocks do that that's why they're important it's not just because oh it lets the gases out yeah I know you can open the bottle up too too but if you have to open that bottle two and three and four times a day what if you forget what if um you had to work late that night and you come home and you head up boom in your house it just to me it's a safety thing it's a very simple thing so we only recommend the loosened lid if it's like your very first time you've never done it and even then if you have the ability to get an airlock do it that way please it's just so much safer and so much better all around I know I go blue in the face talking about it all the time but it really is a safety concern and it's very important because there's a lot that can go wrong if you don't do it this way most of the things that we stress in our videos that some people may question why we stress them we stress them particularly one for safety two for uh real I can't think of the word words reliable reliability that's the word thank you repeatability repeatability consistency they will set you free and they will they will keep some of the problems that may occur from even happening so you don't even have to think about it anymore you don't have to worry about it you just set it and forget it right and we're trying to make this approachable and easy and a happy experience for you because we want you to enjoy this hobby not just the final results but the whole process something else we talk about things often that we hear in comments on our channel so if something keeps coming up you're going to see it in these and you're going to see us address it in videos because that is what people are asking about that's what people are talking about and lately a lot of people have been coming back saying oh I don't need an airlock I just do the loosen the lid thing and I just burp it every day well I kind of cringe every time I see somebody say that especially when they say I've been doing it that way for years okay to me it's a hobby Hobbies require some amount of investment now I am relatively Frugal when it comes to my gear I don't buy a lot of crazy stuff if airlocks were a hundred dollars a piece I'd be figuring out another way and teaching you how to do it but they're pretty inexpensive relatively speaking buy a dozen of them have two dozen of them if you're going to be into this hobby you're going to break them they're going to crack they're going to get old you're gonna have to replace them but if you have them you're going to be safer than if you don't am I saying not having an airlock is a guarantee of failure no nothing is a guarantee of failure well not nothing but all the things that we say if you don't do them they don't guarantee failure but if you do them they all but guarantee success oh that should be a t-shirt how many t-shirts I think I said that right all right so this leads us to our last and perhaps most important element of the fermentation process that we can convey to you whether you're a brand new brewer or someone who's been doing it for a while and the reason why I'm really stressing this one is because we are constantly getting questions about this and it covers so many different things I have a really great way to say this can I say it yeah in the words of George of the Beatles it's going to take patience and time that's right our last topic is time all right I have an alarm or something going off on my watch I don't even time is up I wasn't timing anything what are you doing see anyway anyway so time and what do we mean by time we mean about about time in regards to the fermentation process there is no one unit of time that is universal for any part uh how quickly the fermentation is going to start how long fermentation is going to take how long it's going to take for your Brew to clear how long it's going to take for foam to start how long it's going to take for foam to clear how long it's going to take for bubbles to start how long it's going to take for bubbles to stop how long it's going to take for the sediment to come down to the bottom of your vessel how long it's going to take for smells to start how long it's going to take for smells to dissipate all these things there is no one time that we can give you because this is a biological process and there's so many factors even a couple degrees difference in environment changes everything different water chemistry changes changes things different yeasts different ages of yeast different to a certain extent quantities of yeast for certain things um the way a yeast was stored even can change it uh the you know how quickly alcohol was made in your Brew how much alcohol was made in your Brew um uh what the pH was you could even use the same exact ingredients as us but if you use like say fresh fruit and a local honey the Honeys are going to be different the fruit is going to be different and it's just there's a lot of little factors that can change things so we get people every once in a while like literally I've had people say how many days until fermentation stops we do not have that answer days I could give you a roundabout in weeks probably I'd say two to four in most cases but to say days that's not that's just not if someone is literally saying fermentation only takes six and a half days don't believe them anymore literally just just disregard them their opinion is no longer valid sorry this goes to another piece of equipment that we really stress purchasing beyond the airlock and that's a hydrometer and the reason why is not to find out how much alcohol you've made it made in your fermentation that's nice it's nice no but that's not important to us what's important to us as instructors and trying to help you is to let you know what stage your fermentation is at and what is going on or what perhaps isn't going on in your particular Brew so with those hydrometer readings you are going to be able to figure out what is going on for yourself once you understand the fermentation process and you won't have to worry so much about time because time I like to say time is a construct people make fun of me and I'm okay with that but but it's also on your side okay whatever so basically disregard times at least it's not on your back don't worry about time forget about time forget about it what you need to do is understand how the fermentation process works and be able to engage that not through time but through preferably hydrometer readings a very popular comment question that we're getting lately is I don't have a hydrometer how can I tell if my Brew is done and the only honest answer I can give is you can't ever know 100 for sure but if you leave it for six to eight weeks most likely it should be done so that's the thing if you don't have any of this stuff it takes you need a lot more time because we can't tell you and even that six to eight weeks might be undershooting it a little because if you're in a little colder environment or your yeast were slow to start or your gravity was super high it could take longer so having a hydrometer tells you now if you prefer to use a refractometer or a you know whatever that's all good too just know that if you're using anything but a hydrometer you do have some calculations to change you have to use the Brewers friend calculators online to figure things out it can be done and they're you know just just as accurate really as a hydrometer just a few more steps involved Some people prefer it some people don't that's all good I've tried them I had a digital hydrometer and I prefer just a basic glass hydrometer I don't even use the per kilometer I like the basic glass hydropter as I like to call them and we don't drop them as much as if we used to anyway continuing on the time topic we've had some comments peop people comparing their time frame with our time frame and that isn't realistic because when we say this much time has passed in our videos we're not telling you that's how much time you should expect because your environment is going to be different from our environment we're just letting you know that's how much time has lapsed for us personally so please don't use that time frame we had um I'm just going to paraphrase from a few different comments but for instance we had a brew that took two weeks at the two week Mark we were showing there was no more pressure in the airlock and we're taking our first reading well on that video Someone said well I waited two weeks and then I racked it there's a distinct difference there we took our first reading at two weeks they racked it when I said why did you rack it already well yours was done at two weeks because they said we we took our first reading waited a week and the reading didn't change in a week so because ours didn't change they took that as at two weeks it's done so I can rack it now I can understand putting that together that way because my brain works much like that too but in this case the part they missed was it wasn't the two weeks that was the important part it was that the the readings didn't change that was the important part they actually didn't even take a reading and in some cases they did and their readings were like 50 points higher 60 points higher than what ours was at the time that we took our reading but because ours was done in two weeks they assumed theirs was too that is where the disconnect comes in and maybe it's something we need to explain a little bit better when we're doing that I don't know um just something to try to work on because that question comes up a lot and I mean to the point that they've racked it and it was like three days in and I'm like but nothing was ever done in three days but people are doing these things and I don't know where they're getting it from sometimes and that's some of what we try to do on our show is show mistakes show how to screw things up and then how to fix it afterwards but also try to guide people towards you know maybe a better way of doing it because some of the information out there on the internet about how to brew isn't real good and some of it's really really good and sorting through and knowing what to use is really hard but I can tell you right now that almost nothing except for like a really really small beer or cider is going to be done in three days and I still wouldn't rack it in three days I'd probably wait at least five percent sure but but depending on your environment you could have a fermentation start up as soon as you set the Brew together and it may bubble for three days and then stop don't freak out don't say oh no what did I do wrong yeah that's a very common thing that's happening now take a reading hopefully you have that equipment because we've stressed that you should have that equipment take that hydrometer reading wait a week take another hydrometer reading you might have just had a really quick brew that fermented out as it should have so I mean it could have stalled too right or it could just have slowed down so there's a lot of things that work and without having that hydrometer coming back right back to that hydrometer you don't know what happened like ours that we saw for 48 hours straight just went nuts and I said I don't know if it's done because I haven't checked it I can look at it all day long and say well you know it's not from it doesn't look like it's fermenting anymore but that doesn't mean it's finished fermenting it could be stalled yep it could also be completely bone dry if it did that's a first for us to to be done like that in three days it was a 1.084 starting gravity so that's pretty fast but we do have a couple of uh new things that we've been trying lately so it is possible so I'm not discounting it but until I stick a hydrometer in there I don't know all right I think we've covered everything we intended to cover a couple of extras that you didn't want me to talk about you know what it just happens sometimes it's okay uh so that was what you should expect in the fermentation process if you have any questions whatsoever about what you're experiencing and your own fermentation process please leave them in the comments below and Brian will make sure to get to you as soon as you can and as always guys thank you so much for watching and listening and have a great day bye [Music]

Channel: City Steading Brews

Views: 11,172

Keywords: what homebrew looks like, homemade wine, homemade mead, what fermentation looks like, how to know if your fermentation is bad, how to know if your mead is bad, how to know if your wine is bad, what to expect in homemade mead, what to expect in homemade wine, what to expect when making mead, what to expect making wine

Id: yv044DK1Ifc

Length: 34min 35sec (2075 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023