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I still maintain its rare in the UK. I've been to two large craft breweries in the last couple of months and, though I didn't get up close to the fermenters I was about 10 - 20feet away and didn't spot any of them with a spunding valve...all fermenters had blow off tubes..and both brewhouses utilised brite tanks too which also suggests no pressure fermentation. These are the things I specifically look for when I do get a chance to cast an eye over a brewery. All the fermenters were enclosed pressure capable conical fermenters, but that makes sense when you're pushing beer around with CO2.I've seen plenty of these in UK breweries. 1-2 Bar is 15-29 psi.
https://store.ssvlimited.co.uk/products/spunding-valve
What has a commercial brewery got to gain from pressure fermenting? It's fine for home brewers to do it just for the crack....but what is pressure fermenting doing to improve the beer, or enable them to make it cheaper for a commercial brewery? Most craft breweries I've visited don't have half the gadgets that us home brewers have like hop bongs, so if you're pressure fermenting in a large couple of thousand litre or so fermenter then you're going to have to dump the pressure out of the vessel, drop in your large bags of hops risking the beer gushing up as the hops cause the beer to foam up, then spend more in CO2 to re-pressurise the vessel. failing that you invest in a hopback which is an expensive bit of kit and breweries tend not to be flush with cash and they have to be sure they can get a return on their investment. They can only do that by selling beer for higher prices and make higher margins if they can differentiate it from the competition on the basis of flavour and the market is prepared to pay more, or make the beer cheaper. I'm not sure pressure fermentation achieves any of these things.
I'd be interested to understand why any commercial brewery would choose to pressure ferment during active fermentation.
This is Adam's take on it...
This is interesting too and suggests the main benefit of spunding is to carbonate the beer as it is thought (and I agree) that you get a better quality foam/head when you naturally carbonate vs. force carbonate, which is why I'm experimenting with spunding in the tail end of fermentation.