The yeast is one of the variables here. True top croppers will perform better, from what I have read. The Peter Austin Ringwood and WLP Essex strains come to mind.
The German Wheat beer strains are said to like open fermenters. If you are ever at Sierra Nevada’s Taproom in Chico, there is a small window at the left end of the bar. Go look in, and you might see the Kellerweiss fermenting in the open fermenters. They put these in for that beer, from what I understand. Most everything else in in big to huge conicals for the Chico Strain.
hey guys, glad to see we sparked a healthy discussion of the technique as it applies to homebrewing.
The more technical aspects aside, the fermentation went off without a hitch! No contamination and certainly fa more esters produced (at least on the nose).
Mike is kegging the beer this weekend and we will be doing some tasting notes early in the week. We’ll compare the batch to a closed fermented hefe, another wheat beer (from episode #1 actually) and some commercial examples. We’ll film this and put it on next week’s episode, 6/11…so look for that for the report!
The recipe Mike used for this open fermentation is his house Hefe recipe, so he’s been making it a long time with very consistent results. I’m guessing he will be able to detect the differences. He’s also a BJCP certified judge, so he’ll give the beer hell with his critique.
Because I already had the stuff to seal it…it wasn’t like I had to go buy it. I guess I could have just kept going with open fermentation, but if you saw the condition of the room I ferment in, you’d understand why I was nervous about that. It was an experiment and when I didn’t see any benefit, I went back to the old way. Maybe more experimentation using different yeasts would have given me different results, but I wasn’t interested.
