Primary fermentation, and no transfer of wort?

[juaniarribere1]

Hello everybody, this is my first thread, I´ve been brewing as a hobby for almost a year (20L batches), but now I want to go a bit bigger, 100L batches, to start a tiny micro-brewery. The thing is that for these batches I will need bigger fermentors, and better cooling equipments, which I do not have, so I rented a small place with a refrigeration chamber where I can set the temperature (and put 100L fermentators in). My problem is, that I think I will not be able to let the beer rest at a low temperature (3 to 4 celsius) after the primary fermentation, as I would have to change the temp of the chamber after 4 o 5 days, every week (or every 10 days), if I want to add more fermentors to the chamber.

That said, my question is as follows: is it a bad idea to ferment my wort at the temperature indicated for each recipe and yeast, let´s say for example 20C (68F), then drain the yeast that has gone to the bottom of the fermentor after the primary fermentation, and then let it rest again, in the same fermentor, for some more days, at the same temperature? so that I do not have to switch neither the temp of the chamber, nor the fermentor.
I know that the cold crash and/or lagering would help with clarification, but I do not seem to have much choice. I was thinking of pouring some gelatin two days before kegging. Could this help?

My main issue is that I do not know if skipping the aging in cold of the beer, will make its flavour change or be a worse product. Always speaking about ALES.

I hope someone can help me with this, thanks a lot in advance!

 

[SirDickButts]

welcome to talkbeer!

if you've only been brewing for a year and wanna open a nanobrewery...you might wanna rethink this. LOL
ever thought about investing in a glycol chiller w/ glycol jacketed FV's and BT's?
how would you harvest the yeast from the FV?
are you going from FV straight to keg?

it would take a long ass time to carb beer in a keg @ warm temps.
this sounds like a bad idea....

 

[juaniarribere1]

welcome to talkbeer!

if you've only been brewing for a year and wanna open a nanobrewery...you might wanna rethink this. LOL
ever thought about investing in a glycol chiller w/ glycol jacketed FV's and BT's?
how would you harvest the yeast from the FV?
are you going from FV straight to keg?

it would take a long ass time to carb beer in a keg @ warm temps.
this sounds like a bad idea....

Hello SDB!
I have thought of them, but they are out of my reach for the moment...
The harvest would be using the bottom valve to drain it
And yes, my idea is to go from Fv staight to keg, and carbonate with co2. Do you think it is not a good idea to do that? never tried it, hehe

 

[juaniarribere1]

Hello SDB!
I have thought of them, but they are out of my reach for the moment...
The harvest would be using the bottom valve to drain it
And yes, my idea is to go from Fv staight to keg, and carbonate with co2. Do you think it is not a good idea to do that? never tried it, hehe

BTW, thanks for the wellcome!

 

[Evahflow]

Hello everybody, this is my first thread, I´ve been brewing as a hobby for almost a year (20L batches), but now I want to go a bit bigger, 100L batches, to start a tiny micro-brewery. The thing is that for these batches I will need bigger fermentors, and better cooling equipments, which I do not have, so I rented a small place with a refrigeration chamber where I can set the temperature (and put 100L fermentators in). My problem is, that I think I will not be able to let the beer rest at a low temperature (3 to 4 celsius) after the primary fermentation, as I would have to change the temp of the chamber after 4 o 5 days, every week (or every 10 days), if I want to add more fermentors to the chamber.

That said, my question is as follows: is it a bad idea to ferment my wort at the temperature indicated for each recipe and yeast, let´s say for example 20C (68F), then drain the yeast that has gone to the bottom of the fermentor after the primary fermentation, and then let it rest again, in the same fermentor, for some more days, at the same temperature? so that I do not have to switch neither the temp of the chamber, nor the fermentor.
I know that the cold crash and/or lagering would help with clarification, but I do not seem to have much choice. I was thinking of pouring some gelatin two days before kegging. Could this help?

My main issue is that I do not know if skipping the aging in cold of the beer, will make its flavour change or be a worse product. Always speaking about ALES.

I hope someone can help me with this, thanks a lot in advance!

Fermentation temperature is probably the most important part of brewing and where you should spend the majority of your money. From what I understand your issue is keeping your fermentation chamber at the proper temperature for fermenting ales while also needing a cooler temperature to cold crash to harvest yeast/transfer beer to serving vessels? Where will you be putting the kegs to cool once the beer is transferred into them? If you have/can get the money you will need another cold storage for this. If it's not possible you will have to ferment/cold crash/chill kegs in cycles which is going to slow your brewing and output which is going to slow any income. Do you/can you serve beer onsite? If you aren't selling pints I imagine it would be nearly impossible to break even at 100L. Not sure what the laws in Argentina are. I'd say minimum you will need another cold storage to operate somewhat successfully. Try looking up directions online and maybe build one for less than buying. I don't want to come off harsh but you probably should have figured this all out before renting a place.

 

[juaniarribere1]

Actually, my main question is that if I do really need the cooler temp for a cold crash process, or this can be ommitted. The idea is not to cold crash, nor go through a lagering process or similar, that wolud require lower temperatures.
It wolud be something like: primary fermentation - draining of yeast (while keeping the wort in same fermentor) - wait another 3 to 4 days - add gelatine to clarify- wait two more days - kegging - carbonation - deliver keg to beer store.
The place I will be cooking was already rented by a friend, and he needed to share so that it wouldn´t be that expensive for him, and as I had heard many times that the cold crash is not something "mandatory", I decided to give it a go, hehe.

 

[Five28 hz]

You can figure out a lot of these things through homebrew batches. It's hard enough, damn near impossible, to turn a profit on anything smaller than a 7 barrel system, let alone dumping batches because you don't even know how to clarify your beer. You talk about kegging, but your only getting 100 L fermentors. That's like 3 pony kegs and some change that your selling to a store at a discounted rate. Do those numbers work for your materials, overhead and profit margins?

It's either time to pump the brakes or just say **** it and do a kickstarter...

 

[SirDickButts]

if you can turn a profit from 100L of beer....maybe i should move to Argentina?
nah, too many hot ladies out there....too tempting.

 

[juaniarribere1]

if you can turn a profit from 100L of beer....maybe i should move to Argentina?
nah, too many hot ladies out there....too tempting.

haha, in the area where I live, cooking 100L a day, five days a week, four weeks a month, you would get a profit of about 4k usd, every month... that´s why I want to start right away..

 

[Evahflow]

haha, in the area where I live, cooking 100L a day, five days a week, four weeks a month, you would get a profit of about 4k usd, every month... that´s why I want to start right away..

You say cooking. Are you sure you didn't mean to go to TalkCocaine.com? Looks like I am in the wrong country

 

[juaniarribere1]

You say cooking. Are you sure you didn't mean to go to TalkCocaine.com? Looks like I am in the wrong country

hehe, making I meant, I´m having some translation issues

 

[nanobrew1]

You are going to need to build a work flow for your system. You say you are going to be brewing 5 days a week. That is a LOT. If your average beer takes 2 weeks in the FV and 1 week in a Brite tank, that means you need at a bare minimum 10 FV and 5 brite tanks.

You will need two main temperatures; fermenting and carbonating/serving. You can do this through a cold room/storage or through jacketed equipment with a glycol chiller. While jacketed equipment and a chiller is more expensive it allows more control. If you want to just do cold rooms you will need a two different cold spaces, one for the FV (at 20C) and one for the Brites and keg storage/serving (2 to 5C).

The FV it sounds like you understand enough so I will not go over any of it.

It sounds like you really care about clarity. Going through a filter might be your best bet, otherwise a simple way would be to store in brite tanks a couple of days, let everything settle, then pull from the bottom and leave the beer in the brite. From there you can carbonate with a carb stone. Gelatin will require the transfer from one brite tank to another, that means more equipment, more time, more cleaning. You can carbonate in kegs, but that would require individual hook ups (more equipment) and either letting them sit a long time (more delay in your process) or shaking the kegs (more work time). No matter what you need the beer at 2 to 5C to carbonate)

Do you plan on all sales being in house or selling kegs? If selling kegs, obviously you will need to then fill the kegs and store them until they are ready to be delivered. If serving in house, you can hook up the draft lines directly to the brite tanks and serve from there.

There is a lot to go over, especially if you are not familiar with kegging or the entire flow process.

I would HIGHLY recommend a bigger system. 100L is very small. As mentioned earlier, you would need a lot of vessels for storage and your output would be small. For example, getting something like a 300L (not sure on standard sizes) setup would mean you could brew 1/3 of the time as planned and need roughly 1/3 of the vessels. That would probably be smaller space wise, lower investment cost, and much less work.

 

[juaniarribere1]

You are going to need to build a work flow for your system. You say you are going to be brewing 5 days a week. That is a LOT. If your average beer takes 2 weeks in the FV and 1 week in a Brite tank, that means you need at a bare minimum 10 FV and 5 brite tanks.

You will need two main temperatures; fermenting and carbonating/serving. You can do this through a cold room/storage or through jacketed equipment with a glycol chiller. While jacketed equipment and a chiller is more expensive it allows more control. If you want to just do cold rooms you will need a two different cold spaces, one for the FV (at 20C) and one for the Brites and keg storage/serving (2 to 5C).

The FV it sounds like you understand enough so I will not go over any of it.

It sounds like you really care about clarity. Going through a filter might be your best bet, otherwise a simple way would be to store in brite tanks a couple of days, let everything settle, then pull from the bottom and leave the beer in the brite. From there you can carbonate with a carb stone. Gelatin will require the transfer from one brite tank to another, that means more equipment, more time, more cleaning. You can carbonate in kegs, but that would require individual hook ups (more equipment) and either letting them sit a long time (more delay in your process) or shaking the kegs (more work time). No matter what you need the beer at 2 to 5C to carbonate)

Do you plan on all sales being in house or selling kegs? If selling kegs, obviously you will need to then fill the kegs and store them until they are ready to be delivered. If serving in house, you can hook up the draft lines directly to the brite tanks and serve from there.

There is a lot to go over, especially if you are not familiar with kegging or the entire flow process.

I would HIGHLY recommend a bigger system. 100L is very small. As mentioned earlier, you would need a lot of vessels for storage and your output would be small. For example, getting something like a 300L (not sure on standard sizes) setup would mean you could brew 1/3 of the time as planned and need roughly 1/3 of the vessels. That would probably be smaller space wise, lower investment cost, and much less work.

Hello nanobrew, thanks for taking the time to comment. I am not plannig for the moment to cook 5 times a week, as I do have another job, so at the beginning I´ll do it two times a week, till I get used to it, get to know the new parts of the equipment (such as the plaque chiller, co2 tube, etc) and start developing a workflow as you suggested. Once I am comfortable with that, the next step would be to raise the cookings and invest in equipment improvements, such as jacketed fvs.
The 300L equipment would be ideal, but the investment in capital would be out of my reach (unless I applied for a loan or sth, which I do not want to at the moment), so I´ll keep it small for now, and see how the project develops. I´d really like to have that size of equipment, though.
The kegging and storing would not be a problem, as the beer store which I´ll work with has kegs and room to store them, once I have them filled from the fvs. They would even carbonate them.
Do you think that if I use gelatin, it would not be possible to drain it from the bottom valve of the fv? that is what I am plannig to do, so that I do not have to transfer to another vessel..

 

[SirDickButts]

whats the lowest temp your cold room can reach?
you could probably carb your kegs @ 20c with co2 + sugar to kill some time.
even then...that may not be too helpful.

 

[nanobrew1]

Do you think that if I use gelatin, it would not be possible to drain it from the bottom valve of the fv? that is what I am plannig to do, so that I do not have to transfer to another vessel..

Not sure as I have never used gelatin, but I would think it would be too thick to get all sucked out. Plus, gelatin works best cold, so you would need to find a way to bring the temp down. Since your batch size is so small, you could always buy a fridge and put a small brite tank in there. You could then let more debris settle, carbonate, and fill from that. Having the ability to have 2 temperatures seems to be a big hurdle for you.

Also, if this is something you are looking doing for a business, I highly recommend dropping the money on a kegging system right now so you can learn that process now. Once you understand that process it will help you figure out how to build your setup

 

[juaniarribere1]

excellent, at the beginnig I could do that as they are small batches, surely as weeks go by it´ll turn out something

 

[juaniarribere1]

whats the lowest temp your cold room can reach?
you could probably carb your kegs @ 20c with co2 + sugar to kill some time.
even then...that may not be too helpful.

I know I can put it down to 2 C (35,5 F) for sure, less than that have not tried, but would not be necessary.

 

[DoctorM1]

For clarity:

Clarex or clarity ferm added before fermentation and biofine added to the brite tank is a much better option than gelatin. Not sure if you can get it in Argentina directly from the manufacturer though.

And you really should get a bigger system now.