Fermentation is a Beautiful Thing

 

Fermentation is an interesting process. I can only imagine that the first brewers must have thought it was magic or some kind of demon breathing life into their wort. Just think about it, you basically put "grain tea" in a jug, add some yeast, and in 8 hours you get a bubbly foam appearing on top and bubbling from what seems to be nowhere.

In the picture above you can see 4 different brews at the different stages of fermentation. In the upper right, you have a brew that was pitched (yeast added to it) 8 hours earlier. It is blowing CO2 through a blow-off tube like you were blowing as hard as you can into the jar. The crousen (foam on top) is white in color and is "rolling" up from the bottom.

In the upper left, you can see what the carboy to the right will look like 24 hours later. I have swapped the blow-off tube to an airlock, and the bubbling has reduced to about a bubble a second. The crousen has started to darken in color and the yeast is settling to the bottom.

The carboy in the lower right is another day older and the airlock is bubbling once every 10 seconds or so. The crousen is continuing to darken and settle, and this will proceed in this manner for a week until I rack (transfer) it over to another carboy. By that point the bubbling will have dropped to once every minute or so, the gravity will have leveled off, and the crousen will be gone or reduced from the top.

The carboy in the lower left is one that has just been racked. It only bubbles every few minutes and is resting to balance out the flavors. We have had some bubble and foam a little after this step, after it is stirred up from the process, but after 2 weeks in the secondary fermentor it will be ready to bottle. OCBC typically uses a 1-2-3 method. One week in primary fermentor, two weeks in secondary, and three weeks in the bottle. The secondary time and bottle time can vary and a few extra weeks in these steps can really help smooth out the flavors and the balance out the beer.

Check out the video below to see and hear the fermentation in action.

Simple Efficiencies Make Big Differences in Brewing

When our club started brewing, our first priorities were to get the steps right, try to understand the process and what was happening, and to see where we could find efficiencies. After 2000 bottles of beer made, our knowledge is solid and our efficiencies are paying off.

New efficiencies on brew day have made it where we can add new processes to make a better beer and not take up any extra time in our day. The water still has to get up to boiling, the hops have to boil for an hour, but by switching to a contra-flow chiller instead of our immersion chiller, we have saved 45 minutes. We are then able to use 30 of those minutes to introduce a better aeration process, with an aeration stone instead of just shaking the carboy, which is getting us better fermentation and better beer.

With our fermentation starting faster and more vigorously from the additional oxygen, we are able to rack the brew to a secondary in 7 days instead of waiting 10-14 days typically before. For the racking process we invested in a new 1/2" racking cane to replace a 5/8" cane and have been able to rack 5 gallons of beer from carboy to carboy in 5 minutes instead of 15.

Bottling the beer has always felt like a long, painful process. We started sanitizing bottles by dunking them in a sanitized solution, in a bucket, but we got a bottle sprayer that we can pump the sanitizer in and set them asside to be filled, instead of filling the bottles individually and pouring them out. We also got a 1/2" bottle filler to replace a 5/8" one, and just like the racking cane, we improved our time. We went from a 30+ minute process, to bottling 50 beers in 10 minutes.

It definitely seems like everything else in life, you live and learn, and time saved makes everything feel more manageable.

Better Aeration Makes Much Better Beer

When we first started brewing, we did it by the book (but only as far as we knew to read). We had the recipes to follow, the online forums and tips, and we had some intuition on how to brew beer. We also focused all of our attention on getting the steps right and keeping everything sanitized. All of these things are still being done, but we have found out a few key things that are improving our process and our beers' flavors.

The main thing that we have started to do, that is helping the flavor and quality of our beer, is proper aeration. We knew that we were supposed to aerate the wort before we pitched the yeast, but we were a little lazy and would only shake the carboy for 5-10 minutes at most. The beer would foam up and we assumed that was enough.

1000+ OCBC beers later, our palettes have become more fine tuned with what our brews are supposed to taste like. Many of our beers are very distinct, but we started noticing that some of them were having a slight banana after taste. A little research informed us that our beers may not have enough oxygen and the banana flavor is a result of the yeast suffocating. We decided that the best thing to do was invest in the Northern Brewer Aeration System, that we use after the wort has cooled off, and before we pitch the yeast.

Like everything else, it has taken a few tries, but we have learned how to successfully aerate the brew. The first lesson was how to aerate the wort, but keep the foam contained and "blown off" in a controlled manor. We devised a setup where the diffuser stone and aeration tube runs through a 1" vinyl tube and placed in an universal bung that we drilled a 3/4" hole in. This allows the aerator to continue to run and directs the foam to just fall into the sink or trash instead of all over the side of the carboy and floor.

The other thing that we have learned is how to properly maintain the diffuser stone and in-line filter. The directions just say to not touch the diffuser stone directly, because oils from our fingers will clog the microscopic holes. To keep it clean and sanitized we just boil the stone for 10 minutes before and after use. This keeps any wort that may dry on the stone off and any bacteria from growing where the sanitizer can't get to it. The stone is only handled through the plastic pouch that it was shipped in. We also keep the filter completely dry, so that the air can freely flow through the line.

Since using the system, we haven't had any banana flavors and the fermentation seems to be more intense and uniform. Just another way that OCBC strives to have the best quality and flavorful beers.