Wine Beer Fermenter- 30L Home Brew

We primarily cater to small home brewers who like to DIY and customize their products. In the fittings section of the website, you will find a lot of support to repair and customize your equipment. If you wish to service your equipment and are stuck, do reach out to us at [email protected] and we will try to help you out.

Warranty support unfortunately is not there at the moment for imported items. Shipping back to the international manufacturer often costs more than the product. That being said, we will strive to help you get the spare parts to help you restore your homebrew equipment, beer kits, and winemaking equipment.

Metallic flavors have multiple names: Tinny, coiny, copper, iron, or blood-like flavor. It makes the home brew beer and wine taste like beetroot and is generally considered undesirable.

There are two major reasons for the metallic flavors in beer and wine:

• Equipment issue: The metal ions from your equipment could be getting leached into your brew. Remember that fermentation releases a lot of organic acids that can react with metals. Fermenting in aluminum or non-food grade fermenters is the usual culprit.
• Even if you are using SS304 stainless steel equipment, you can sometimes get the metallic flavors if the workmanship is not good. All equipment needs to be treated for pickling or Passivation. This removes any free ions and unbonded iron from the surface of the containers. Welding, drilling, bending or any metalworking creates free unbonded ions, sharp edges, and micro-fissures from which metallic ion can be leached. Treating the equipment with full concentration (without dilution) of Anphossan will leach out any unbonded metal ions. It will also remove any stains, rust (yes freshly welded stainless steel can rust if not pickled) and bring back the shiny luster in your equipment
• From Malt: Commercial breweries install a powerful magnet at the end of their grain mill to pull out any metallic shavings from the grain and keep these flavors at bay.
• From Special Ingredients: Some fruits, especially the beetroot has a prominent metallic flavor and should be avoided.
• Groundwater: In Eastern India (especially near mines), this could be an indication of groundwater contamination. Using RO water and monitoring the wort chemistry would help. New stainless steel equipment also gives these flavors, probably because of micro-scratches and free ions on the metallic body. A strong acid wash, followed by alkaline neutralization helps to remove it from the brand new equipment.

Umami: Soy sauce or Thai fish curry aromas and flavors. It primarily comes from amino acids released from the autolysis of yeast. Slight umami flavor is desirable in Sake and some aged beers but it is a difficult flavor to balance. The usual culprit is the beverage sitting over dead yeast (cake/ lees) for a few weeks. Some brewers have switched to lower protein malts & changes in mashing to reduce Umami. Conical fermenters where the yeast cake can be drained out is recommended to combat these notes.

Not more than a few days or max 10 days. Why?

Once the fermentation is over, the yeast dies and settles at the bottom. This yeast then starts breaking down and releasing umami flavors (soy sauce). To counter this, professional brewers brew in conical fermenters. In a conical fermenter, you can remove the dead yeast, and hence the umami flavors from yeast breakdown will not bother you.

Homebrewers, on the other hand, periodically rake their wine and beer from primary to secondary to tertiary fermenters to get rid of the off-flavors from sediments.

Typically it takes 30-48 hours in case of wine or beer ales. It can take as long as 3 days for the lager fermentation as the cold temperature decreases the yeast CO2 fermentation rate and also the CO2 solubility increases at lower temperatures.

If your fermenter has still not started bubbling then:

1. Please check for leaks. Very similar to a car puncture repair. You can spray sanitizer at all joints and lid and seals to find a leak. Once you find it seal it with Teflon tape or any other food-grade sealant that you can find at a plumbing store.
2. Check for stuck fermentation
3. Cross-check if you have fermentable sugars left in your fermenter.

Indian summers are notorious in increasing temperatures to above 25 Degree Celsius. Above this temperature, the yeast starts producing stressed off-flavors and hangover causing chemicals. Luckily, you can make a simple swamp cooler for your fermenter. Other options to cool down your fermenter include:

1. Using a cooling jacket or ice to bring down the peak heat of the Indian Summer noon.
2. Converting an Ice-Cream freezer into a fermentation chamber using a simple thermostat
3. Using tec Peltier cooler to regulate the temperature with a mobile app.

You can use any food-grade sanitizer to sanitize your fermenter. StarSan or Hydrogen Peroxide good sanitizers that are available easily in the local chemist shop. Also, be mindful of cleaning/buffing any scratches, blindspots (areas which tend to blacken over time because they were hard to reach or clean). Remember to clean the insides of holes and dismantle joints and fittings before sanitizing. For more details refer to this blog post.

One of the biggest advantage of a transparent plastic carboy fermenter is that is allows for a very accurate beer and wine quantity reading.

Fermzilla comes with a water level sticker as well. The sticker will have a read marking for the seam level. All you need to do is to align the two and stick it.

Fermzilla Water level strip application. How to.

Watch this video on YouTube

If you are using a fermenter without this water level sticker, then you will have to calibrate it the old school way.

• Step 1: Take the empty fermenter weight and tare it to zero.
• Step 2: Add 1 kg or 1 Liter of water.
• Step 3: Mark that level as 1 Liter
• Step 4: Add another kg to get the 2 liter marking.
• Step 5: Repeat till the fermenter is filled.

It is very important to have right water level marking in a home brew fermenter. Most recipes will call for a specific ratio of wine and beer additives. If you don’t know how much liquid is there, chances are that you will add too much or too little of spices. This will lead to imbalance of flavors, colors and aromas. Also good record keeping is the key to be able to successfully scale from a small home brewing to pilot recipe research to running your own microbrewery.

• Step 1: Ensure that the fermenter is sealed airtight. If the lid is loose some food-grade packing (cling wrap, Teflon tape, or food-grade silicone sealant or food-grade adhesive) is used to seal the fermenter.
• Step 2: Create a hole in the lid of the fermenter for the airlock. Use a drilling machine or hot iron nail to achieve it. I like fermenters with a plastic lid as making a hole is easy.
• Seal the joint between the lid. You can use a cork, a grommet or a hot glue sealant for this.
• Arm the airlock by adding some water or disinfectant to it.
• Test for air leakage. Press the lid gently. If the airlock bubbles then the seal is good enough. Else you need to debug and find the leakage to be plugged.

Till 1970, dry yeast was not used commercially for brewing. Most breweries would save a bit of the trub and use it for their next batch. Even bakers would mix a part of their old dough to leaven their new batch of bread. This practice has seen a comeback due to the resurgence of sourdough technique in baking.

Traditional Wine makers throughout Europe would cultivate the yeast biome. They would compost the lees and all the organic residue from the wine making process. This compost is used as a natural organic fertilizer for their fruits and grapes. In doing so the yeast strain that the particular unique natural strain of yeast (which is locally available and isolated) would dominate the biome. The fruits now just need to be juiced and they will start fermenting naturally.

Kveik yeast is also usually harvested and rarely cultured. Traditional households would make special oak rings or towers that they would insert in their brew. The yeast would attach themselves to the wood and this wood would be used to inoculate the next batch.

How to Harvest Liquid Yeast at Home

Today we are going to talk about how to harvest yeast from your old batch. Depending on which school of yeast harvesting you follow, you can either top-crop or bottom crop your yeast. If you are using a conical fermenter, then it comes with a free yeast harvesting attachment. Once you have harvested the yeast, you should wash it. Doing so will get it rid of all the hops and sediments which can lower

You can choose to use fresh liquid yeast by adding some yeast nutrient and making a starter culture. Post that you can:

1. Use the wet yeast as is. Keep feeding it every 3rd day with some fresh wort to keep it alive. Store it in the refrigerator dairy section (4 degrees) so that its metabolism is reduced. Best if you are planning to reuse the yeast within a month.
2. Make slants using glycerine. This will allow you to freeze them and store for ~2years
3. Dry the yeast. Especially Kveik. The home-dried yeast typically have a shelf life of 90-180 days.

How To Harvest and Wash Yeast for Homebrewing

Watch this video on YouTube

This writeup has a detailed pros and cons of different fermenter designs.

Fermentation Bucket

The bucket has a very wide lid. It makes it easier to clean. Remove the sediment and sanitize. It is easier to attach a spigot into the bucket as your hand can reach to the base and screw the tap on to your fermenter. Buckets are very easy to stack. I have kept 25 buckets one inside each other to make a pillar reaching the roof of my apartment. Carboy would have taken a whole sleeping bed-sized space for the same number.

A wine maker loves bucket for the primary fermentation. For the first 3-4 days it is so much easier to work in a bucket. The seeds skin and the sediment are so easy to remove.

Beer makers love to attach a spigot or tap to their buckets. This makes bottling so much easier. Just attach a beer gun and gravity will finish the job.

However, the large lid of the bucket takes its toll. It is very difficult to seal the bucket and it invariably leaks. Also large lid means more head room. This headspace is the oxygen or air between the liquid and your lid/airlock. Either your beer/wine will get oxidized in the bucket or the headspace will be too little and the krausen (floating yeast) will spill over.

Plastic Carboy

Carboy on the other hand are great for secondary fermentation. Its narrow mouth is easy to seal. So no leakage and oxidation loss. It is preferred for any aging experiments. Plastic carboys are also inexpensive and easily available in the corner store. Just ask for a bisleri water can and you can bring home a fermenter.

Drawback:

1. Glass fermenters are fragile
2. There is no way to put a tap of airlock through the narrow mouth.
3. It is very hard to clean as the mouth is too narrow.
4. Improper sanitization means that carboy are prone to infection.

Solution

30 Liters Flat bottom fermenter by Arishtam. It has a wide enough mouth to be used as primary. Yet the seal is tight enough that it can be used for prolonged aging. The lid is wide enough for a hand to go inside and clean/sanitize the whole equipment so no infection.

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Glass is the preferred container for wine or alcohol. It does not leach, it does not oxidize, its smooth surface does not shelter microbes.

Bulk aging in larger carboys/fermenters is preferred over bulk aging in bottles for following reasons:

1. Sedimentation: The more the wine ages, the more sediment it collects. by bulk aging you get a second chance to remove it and get clear bottles that can be gifted.
2. Infusion: Most Indians love to infuse spices, botanicals, herbs or oak chips in their wine. Bulk gaining in big bottles makes calculations easier. Also it is practical to remove the spices when the right level of spices is achieved.
3. Oxidation: Small bottles have larger head space per unit volume. Bigger bottles one can fill to the brim and be secure.
4. Convinience: It helps procastinate the effort to bottle up the wine till its ready for consumption.
5. Space: Larger the bottle, lesser space it takes