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Home  Homebrew Instructions Fermenting your home brew
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Fermenting your home brew |
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Written by Web Master
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Tuesday, 17 April 2007 |
Fermenting your homebrew is where all the good stuff happens. In a nutshell, yeast eats sugar and produces the alcohol and carbon dioxide (Co2) that your homebrew needs. That is the short, very short version. Fermentation is a complex, scientific and natural process that can easily take up several pages to fully explore so we will stick to the basics here.
We pick up where the boil leaves off. You have cooled the wort to room temperature and tossed in the yeast.
So now what??
Well, during the boil you have added in the malt extract which is our primary source for sugars. We also added hops to provide our bitterness, along with flavor and aroma all of which help to add a balance in our final beer. Besides what we have already mentioned (yeast eats sugar- makes beer) there are a few other things that happen in your beer. While your yeast are hard at work making beer, hop sediment, protein, spent yeast and other hazing material has the opportunity to settle out and the result is a clear glass of homebrew. Final flavor profiles will be decided as the yeast consumes the sugars, your homebrew will become decidedly less sweet allowing the malt and hop flavors to meld and balance one another. Now let's take a look at the stages your beer will go through.
First off once you pitch(add) the yeast, you should pretty much leave the homebrew undisturbed. Avoid splashing your beer and also try not to move it to much as this will cause the sediment to rouse and mix back in. It is best to place your fermenter in a location that it can sit for the duration of the process. Air is also a bad thing to introduce after you have added your yeast, air will oxidize the beer and cause a stale cardboard like flavor and aroma, so keep it out. Now you will notice that visible signs of fermentation are not prevalent right away. This is normal, I repeat normal. This is called the lag period. The lag period seems to take an eternity but usually lasts for a day or so. Even though you will not see activity, rest assured there is. The yeast you add needs time to prepare for the upcoming events. Your yeast will spend this time building an army strong enough to complete fermentation, this is called propagation. Typically you will not notice this at all. Once it's done, you will see activity begin.
Temperature is a concern for you and the health of the yeast. As a general rule, ale fermentations are completed in a range of about 60 to 68F and lager fermentations from about 45 to 55F followed by a cold aging in the low to mid 30F range. Going outside of the recommended range for your yeast strain can lead to off flavors and or having it come to a halt altogether. Fermentations that stop are called "stuck". Most of the time your yeast packet will have a range listed for the specific strain you are using.
After the lag period is over and fermentation gets rolling, you will notice a foam forming on the top of your beer. This is a good thing, that foamy head forms a layer of protection and provides and visual indicator that it is moving along nicely. How long will it take?? Well, that is a good question. Really the only way to tell when your beer is complete, is to take hydrometer readings. Hopefully your recipe gave you target gravity readings, marked by OG for original gravity and FG for final gravity. Typically you are shooting for a final gravity at or about 1.010. Higher readings indicate additional residual sugars resulting in a sweeter finished beer and lower numbers indicate a finished beer that is drier. A reading of 1.010 is average, not too dry and not too sweet. It is very important to be positive that the fermentation is complete prior to bottling, if not you will have issues with over carbonation or even bottles that break under very high pressure. (been there, done that)Primary fermentation can take up to 10 days. It should not take more than that or you risk development of some off flavors, nothing too serious though. If your homebrew needs more than the 10 days, it is best to do a secondary, which is nothing more than transferring the beer to a second fermenter (hence the term, secondary). It is best to use a glass carboy for the secondary that way you can allow the beer to age for a few months if need be. The main reasons I like to transfer my homebrew into secondary is to get it off the spent yeast and hop sediment that has settles to the bottom of the primary.
Thats it. Now that your beer is ready, its time to bottle your homebrew!
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 01 May 2007 )
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