What to Expect When Brewing at Home - Fermentation of Wine, Mead, Cider and Beer

is this normal what to expect when you're brewing [Music] [Applause] [Music] we get a lot of comments and questions like is this normal should it look like this in people's brews and we do go over all this but we realize it's scattered across hundreds of videos and it's kind of hard to find sometimes so we thought we'd make a top 10 list and go over the top 10 things that people have been asking about number 10 yes it's normal to see bubbles and foam in a fermenter during fermentation that's literally the yeast doing their job they create co2 and ethanol which is the alcohol you drink as well as a zillion other things and as that comes out of solution it creates foam and bubbles you should see bubbles coming up the side you should see bubbles in your airlock things like that as that foam gets up there sometimes it dries and it forms this brown crusty line called a chryson line notice i said sometimes because if it doesn't there's no harm and if it does there's no harm it's all good number nine yeast does not determine abv what i mean by that is we get this one a lot people say well if i had more yeast can i get more alcohol no if i double the yeast does that mean i get double the alcohol well no that's not how it works your fermentables and your sugars determine your abv now there is one caveat to that yeast kind of sets the high water mark or the limit there is such a thing called an alcohol tolerance and that is a manufacturer thing usually you have to use google foo to find it because for some reason they don't put it on the packets talking to you yeast manufacturers put it on the packets make life easy for all of us home brewers but that means basically that is the highest that that yeast should be able to ferment to think of it more like the pirates code it's a guideline it's not an exact if you're at 17.95 and your yi says 18 that doesn't mean it's going to go another 0.05 percent it could go another 5 not likely but it could or it could stop before it hits the tolerance there's a million factors at play here that influence what your yeast will actually do so think of it more as a guide number eight sometimes fermentation smells that's right you may get a rotten egg smell a sour smell sometimes it's like a sickly sweet kind of thing all different kinds of smells it really shouldn't be too unpleasant like if you wretch or gag or the neighbors are complaining about the smells that's something to be aware of it's not necessarily a problem but it could be something to worry about down the line what you want to watch out for is hairy growths that are blue black green weird colors things like that those are probably mold or something really bad if you see those in your brew dump it life is too short there's just no reason to make it any shorter normally molds and infections like that are a result of improper sanitation now that doesn't mean that you're dirty it just means that maybe you missed a spot or you know maybe your star sand was a little too used or you let it sit too long or any number of things you could have even just left had the airlock fall off while it was brewing maybe an ingredient wasn't fully cleaned any number of things can happen and it's okay it happens to the best of us the smells though those are usually caused by a stressed yeast or something of the sort sometimes it's from a nutrient deficiency but more often than not it's the eggy smell especially is because you didn't shake it up or aerate it enough in the beginning in other words you left some bejesus in there number seven is sediment it is normal to have sediment in the bottom of your fermenter during fermentation it's nothing to freak out about it's the yeast proteins and all kinds of other substances that fall out of suspension during fermentation and it's really again nothing to worry about you can leave your brew on the leaves for a long time that's what it's called lease i say lease a lot too just because that's the word that i was told but you know it's lee's apparently lease is how you get a house or a car now if you are making a low alcohol brew like a cider or beers that are like six five percent yeah those you probably don't want to leave on the leaves for too long but meads and wines we've left them for months with no detrimental effects i see a lot of people rushing to get it off that lease or off the sediment and that can be dangerous because now your brew is still fermenting and unfortunately you rush that step which means you might rush the next step and the next step and before you know it boom you made a bottle bomb that's not something you really want to do so don't rush it leave it on the lease for a while also we have a video on when it's safe to rack listed in the description of this video number six is using whole fruit now when you're using whole fruit things are just a little bit different you want to make sure you keep it wet okay you do not want that fruit cap to dry out that's how molds and other things can form and it can just get nasty or worst case it can actually form a crust not allowing the gases to escape and it can blow up i've only heard of that a time or two but it could happen now to do it if you have a bucket it's really easy take the lid off and stir it up yes you are potentially adding a little bit of oxygen when you do that however there's so much co2 being formed during fermentation that it's not really a worry if you're careful you're just stirring you're not splashing it all over the place you're just trying to stir it up a little bit if you're in a fermenter with an airlock just give it a swirl it should keep it wet enough and that way there's no risk of oxygenation number five scaling recipes this one comes up all the time we get a lot of people that say hey can you show me how to make this in five gallons and my answer always is just multiply everything by five except the yeast because our recipes are designed to scale up we do one gallon because it's a lot easier for me to show a one gallon fermenter on screen than a five gallon fermenter on screen it's just too big they're too much to try to manage and try to be able to show you all the details involved so that's why we do one gallon plus we just don't have a need to make five gallons around here we just really don't don't need that much meat laying around so we do one gallon batches but that doesn't mean that you have to do one gallon batches you can do three you can do five six whatever you have all you do is multiply every ingredient in that recipe by that number yes even cups of tea and tea bags if you're doing a one gallon and we call for one cup of tea with one tea bag and you want to make a three gallon from that you need three cups of tea and three tea bags yes it really does scale that way the only thing different is the yeast now i generally use a whole packet of yeast in most brews sometimes i'll use half in a one gallon when you scale up there's really no need to use more yeast okay i just use the whole packet because a it's easier b i'm just getting the most bang for my buck and i don't have to worry about yeast going dead in the fridge but if you really really really really want to you can use two packets in a five or six gallon batch and there's no harm people ask all the time how much yeast is too much and the first thing i want to say back is why are you adding so much because you don't need to you only need enough to get it going and they will build a colony that teaspoon or two teaspoons of yeast that you put in well they're going to multiply millions of times so you're going to get a lot more yeast in the end the amount you put in is just to get it going and enough to make a viable colony that's it so a packet two packets at most if you're making five or six gallons and you're fine like i said everything else just scale it up another word about recipes is if you are new at this don't try reinventing the wheel right off the bat use some recipes from a source you trust and make those keep it simple in the beginning so you can understand the fundamentals of what works and why and that way your next time around you can start experimenting but for your first time use a recipe and do it as true to that recipe as you can use the same yeast use the same ingredients the same size everything they did because if you start mixing and matching from different sources you might be mixing methodologies as well and without an understanding of why they did that or why they use this when you mix them together you might get unexpected results might be good might be really bad number four time is your friend this is one of the things that is really hard to learn as a home brewer time is a necessary ingredient in your brew you cannot rush this i know a lot of online recipes say oh rack this after two weeks of fermentation i disagree um you rack it when it's done in most cases that's gonna be longer than two weeks especially if you follow the kind of methodology like we do or you take a reading and you wait a week take another reading to make sure it's done that means you would have been taking the first reading while it was still fermenting there's no way it's done trust me on this yeast can't read they have no idea that it's supposed to be ready in two weeks so you have a deadline or you have a holiday that you're making this for and quite frankly they don't care yeast do two things they eat and they breed that's pretty much it so they don't really care that you need a mead for your mom's birthday in two months that doesn't really matter to them they're going to do what they do let them have the time if you do need a meet for a specific date make sure you start with plenty of time ahead meaning almost a year or even more than a year just to be on the safe side what if you messed up and you had to start over again this all goes along with number seven but the truth is if you rush it you will regret it the other part to this is this is a question we get a lot what should i make if i need something to be ready in a week or two now here's my answer i say go to the store and buy something because there's no brew out there that should be ready and fully drinkable in just a week or two now i know some beers and some ciders maybe that's borderline but even then to be fully done bottled settled the whole thing in two weeks that's a tall order one week never mind i've had people ask about three and four day brews if that's what you're after maybe home brewing is the wrong thing to be looking at you really are looking at a long-term game here minimum a month before you have anything really drinkable okay number three more alcohol does not always make it better if all you want to do is get drunk there are far easier ways to do that than by making homebrew okay you can just go buy a commercial product you know whiskey vodka all these things you're gonna get drunk a whole lot faster and it won't matter however that said if you like making high abv homebrew by all means go for it i'm not going to get in your way and i'm not going to tell you you're doing it wrong because you know why it's your home brew do it the way you want don't let anybody tell you different as long as you like it enjoy it and nobody's getting hurt however for me and for derek and for a lot of our viewers we have found that 10 to 14 even stretching it to 15 seems to be that sweet spot and what i mean by that is not just for flavor and enjoyment but actually for the fermentation itself they tend to ferment cleaner they tend to be a more healthy fermentation and it's more predictable we really don't get stalls and things like that anymore so it's just a better experience overall and it's more reproducible so for us trying to teach people how to do a certain recipe on camera we can teach you how to reproduce that recipe almost to a tee when we work with lower abvs like that the higher the abv the longer you need to age the more powerful yeast you need a lot of things start to change and just gets a little bit more difficult and like i always say if you want more alcohol have two glasses number two environment will change everything now this is important to understand and it's not something that we talk about a lot on the channel but we work in our environment which is generally 75 to 80 degrees fahrenheit pretty much year round that's what the temperature in our house is going to be and i say that because we don't ferment outside we don't store outside we everything is done in the house okay between two or three rooms and they're all pretty much constant temperature and that's important because every yeast has a range of temperatures that it likes to work in if you are in a cold climate and you like to keep your house say in the 50s or 60 degree fahrenheit range talking to you adam you're gonna have a very different experience brewing than somebody that lives say in the tropics and doesn't use air conditioning very very different things different yeasts different processes and if you made the exact same recipe the exact same ingredients the exact same yeast you will get two completely different products simply because the yeast will react differently there's no one way for me to tell you this is not a one-size-fits-all situation it's more of a experiment use different yeasts and different methods until you find a method that works in your environment and stick to it you can always modify recipes to fit a lot of our newer recipes go dry so you can use a higher tolerance yeast if that's what works in your in your area that way you're not worrying about trying to hit that exact alcohol tolerance and keep some sweetness we back sweeten when we need to not really a problem it's all good number one if you waited till fermentation was complete you racked it properly you let it clear and you bottled it properly and you use proper sanitation the whole way through you can store your bruise at room temperature that's right no refrigeration necessary it's also a misconception that refrigeration will kill yeast actually it doesn't at all it puts them dormant now dormant doesn't mean dead it actually slows them down sometimes to a point where they may not be functioning but in most cases nature will find a way and those bottles still could explode trust me i've seen it one of our mods paul has shown a video of well somebody's fridge that had exploding bottles in it because fermentation wasn't complete and they thought the coal would stop fermentation it doesn't it just buys you some time so do yourself a favor let it finish do it right and store them well you'll never have a problem long and short we do store all of our bottles at about 75 to 80 degrees fahrenheit okay we don't have a cellar or anything like that where we keep them cooler they're all stored at that temperature and in all of my years of brewing i've never had one bottle bomb that's right i'm knocking on wood it's not a fun thing i've seen pictures but i've never actually experienced it myself we've also never had a bottle spoil we use screw caps swing tops quarks all kinds of caps we've never had one spoil the only thing that i do recommend is once you open it and drink some now you've got an excess air gap in there if you let that sit for too long first over time it's going to oxidize a little bit and cause off flavors that we've had we've never had one spoiled but we've had the off flavor thing people always ask how long well that depends on your personal tastes i've let them sit at room temperature for a few days couldn't really detect much difference at all i'm sure if i did a side by side i might get something but really nothing bad after several weeks you could start to detect it we had a couple too as a matter of fact that they got not good anymore they sat half a bottle or less for about a year on the shelf before we just ended up saying let's just finish these off they just really weren't any good anymore but it wasn't like they'd spoiled just the flavor had changed so much from oxidation kind of like what happens with sherry not a problem nothing wrong with it it just didn't taste the same anymore it didn't taste nearly as good as it did when it was younger that's for sure have a question or a situation that i didn't cover ask away in the comments we're gonna try to get to everybody and see if we can help you out but as always guys thank you so much for watching have a great day [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: City Steading Brews

Views: 33,419

Keywords: what to expect when brewing at home, expectations in brewing, brewing basics, normal fermentation, what to expect in fermentation

Id: i2QfnmUnZKM

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 27 2022