Hi, I'm Mark Emiley on behalf of Expert Village.
In this next segment, we're going to focus
on our fermentation processes. Now that we've
got our beer all ready, we're going to start
worrying about our fermentation. So, for ales,
we're going to want to keep the fermentation
temperature between sixty and seventy degrees.
You can go on the higher end for some of the
higher strength beers like the IPAs, and also
for the wheats which will pull out a little
more of the interesting phenolics. For lagers,
such as a bock, or a pilsner, we're going
to want to go as cold as we can which means
we want to hit or aim for fifty degrees. So,
with this, you're going to want to take your
bucket, put it into a nice, relatively cool
dark place in your house and let's start our
primary fermentation. In about twenty-four
to forty-eight hours, you should start seeing
your airlock bubble a fair amount. In about
three days, your bubbling should be very,very
vigorous, maybe even once every second or
maybe once every two or three seconds. After
that, it's going to start slowing down. Once
it hits about one bubble every six seconds,
you're going to want to go through your first
racking operation which is described in a
later segment. Once you've done your first
racking operation, the bubbling is going to
go down significantly. Okay, at this point,
it's going to be going into its secondary
fermentation. All the yeast is going to be
falling out of the solution, kind of sedimenting
down at the bottom and you're going to have
a nice, clean beer. If you did buy a hydrometer,
you can track the progress of your fermentation
a lot with this. So, you're going to start
with your initial hydrometer reading, then
in about five or six days, okay, when your
primary fermentation is done, you should be
down to about thirty percent of what your
initial hydrometer reading was. So, if you
were starting at ten fifty, that would mean
you'd be about ten fifteen. At that point,
you're going to siphon. And then after that
you're going to kind of watch your secondary
fermentation. It may drop down a couple more
points. It may get down to twenty-five percent
of what you started at. If you get to that
point, you're in good shape. Even if you didn't,
you still may be okay as long as it's not
still bubbling. And if you're lower, you're
still good. The lager yeast strain that you
used is going to want to be fermented at about
fifty degrees. So, the closer you can keep
that, the better. So here are a couple of
tips for doing that. First, you can put your
carboy in a nice, (or your pail) in a nice
basic bin and dump some ice in there to help
bring down the temperature and some water.
That will stabilize it a lot. To make it a
little better, you can add on a t-shirt. And
you can keep the t-shirt wet, and that will
help evaporate some heat from that as well.
Another step past that, is that you can blow
a fan on that, and that will help remove even
more heat from that. Ideally, you'd like to
put this in your refrigerator. However, this
takes up a lot of space in there. It kind
of knocks out all of your shelves. So, this
is probably the best way you are going to
want to go about this. Now, to do the best
lager that you can, what you'd like to do
is after fermentation, start dropping the
temperature by about one to three degrees
per day down to about freezing (which is thirty
two). Don't worry, the beer won't freeze;
it has alcohol in it. At this, you can let
it sit there for a couple of weeks and it
will develop the wonderful lager characteristics
that you are looking for in this beer. However,
if you can't do this, don't worry. Your beer
is still going to come out fine. This just
adds a little extra to it.
