Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

I brewed a premium lager saturday on my system. Hit my number right on @ 1.049 w/ about 12 G of wort. Used Safalager 34/70 yeast (5 packs according to Mr Malty, did not rehydrate). Fermenter was set to 53 F

I pitched the yeast into the sanke on top of my wort, sealed up the sanke as all Sanke's come. Hooked up my beer tap with the gas port modified to allow gas to come out, and hooked up a picnic tap to the beer out to take samples. My gas line was hooked up to a spunding valve I built with the pressure relief valve set to ~ 2-3.

Because its in a Sanke's its hard to tell when fermentation has started. Sunday I saw no PSI building up. Monday morning I started smelling sulfur in the fridge so I think it must have began early monday morning or before. I changed the valve to 5 psi and every few hours i would come down and have to release some pressure as the guage had crepped up a few psi too high (these valve aren't that accurate).

Yesterday, anxious to see how things have progressed, I took a sample and cranked the PSI up to 15. (Hasn't gotten there yet even after 18 hours, I think this morning it was at 12 psi.

I didn't have a way to degas the sample, so I let it sit out since lunch time yesterday to this morning. I would think that it would naturally go flat in that period of time. The hydrometer told me I was at 1.012 basically at 75% attenuation! My yeast should get me to somewhere like 80%.

After only 4 days fermenting a lager under pressure and I'm pretty much done with fermentation? I'm going to rouse the yeast a few times today after that I'm thinking based on my reading its time to rack to some carboys for lagering?

This was my first batch in a closed system fermenter and it blows my mind how fast a lager appears to be completed.

Thoughts?

Interesting. Is the pressurized fermentation supposed to help it go faster? I've heard of the technique but know very little about it.

My CAP finished in about 3-4 days, if I recall correctly. I'm not used to that in a lager, but the fact that I pitched a much larger, more active yeast cake than I have in the past probably made the difference for me. My pitch was probably on the order of your 5 packs of dried yeast.

Did you pitch warm or cold? Are you planning to do a diacetyl rest? In general, I like to give my lagers a week past the end of visible fermentation to clean up before moving to a lagering vessel.

Sounds really interesting. I think I brought this up to you before, but would you be interested in doing a tech meeting on this and showing off your new electric system? I'm trying to line up topics for May-July.


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DrPaulsen wrote:Interesting. Is the pressurized fermentation supposed to help it go faster? I've heard of the technique but know very little about it.

My CAP finished in about 3-4 days, if I recall correctly. I'm not used to that in a lager, but the fact that I pitched a much larger, more active yeast cake than I have in the past probably made the difference for me. My pitch was probably on the order of your 5 packs of dried yeast.

Did you pitch warm or cold? Are you planning to do a diacetyl rest? In general, I like to give my lagers a week past the end of visible fermentation to clean up before moving to a lagering vessel.

I pitched it as close to my 53 F as I could. One interesting thing about this kind of fermenting is that the diacetyl is actually increased in this process, but is also removed quicker in the process than normal.

Here is a wiki about some accelerated fermentating techniques.

I'm example B.



I know a few people will have a diacetyl rest at room temperature. I may do that, but not sure. Most likely I'll let it sit in the fridge for another week than rack to two cornies with a counter-pressure transfer setup.

Randy -

I'm more than happy to host it. I may be limited with parking to 10-15 people.

Thanks for the chart. If I'm reading it correctly, I typically fall into category F.

Sweet experiment. And I won't even talk about how much I love spunding. I would spund everyday if I could.

On Mar 1, 2012 6:23 PM, "quinton" wrote:

I would spund everyday if I could.

I never realized that you can love brewing too much.  Now, I know.

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