After hearing an old interview with a Sierra Nevada brewer, then reading the Ask The Experts questions/answers from them, I’m now confused about how to ferment SNPA.
The interview (an old one from The Session) said they ferment all their ales the same, starting at 60F then letting it rise to 68.
In the Ask The Experts questions, there is one that talks about fermentation (not their beers specifically) and they suggested people pitch at 65 then rise to 68.
So which should I do? I now have a freezer/temp controller so I can pitch at whatever temp.
That recipe seems pretty much in line the SNPA clone recipe I have brewed a number of times. The only difference is that I seem to get closer to SN if I dry hop with some cascade.
About the fermentation, I chill the wort to 60-65 depending how patient I am and pitch the yeast. Usually a day later it has warmed up to 68ish.
I’m trying to remember if when I was out there, the guy said anything about fermentation temperature of SNPA. I seem to remember it being in the mid-high 60’s. That’s not ambient room temp either, that’s beer temp. Denny might know though. I’d go with what you got. Pitch at 65 and let rise to 68 is a good practice with chico yeast. And again, beer temp, not ambient air temp.
The thing to keep in mind is that places like Sierra Nevada and other large commercial breweries are the size of their conicals easily exceeding 100+ barrels. This creates a large amount of fluid pressure on the yeast that suppress ester and fusel production. So they are being truthful when they say they ferment at 68 or 72F or whatever, but the fluid pressure in a home setting is much less with 5-10 gallons. I generally subtract 2-3F for my fermentation temps based on this information. I think you did the right thing by pitching cool and letting the yeast growth phase happen cool at 60F. Let it rise slowly. Don’t let it go 60 to 68F overnight or you may get a lot of fusel and ester production. Maybe 2 degrees per day? Otherwise you should be fine. I have fermented chico yeast at 62-64F with great results for 3-4 days and then let it free rise to 68F to clean up fermentation by-products.
It’s sitting in a freezer. The temp this morning (10 hours later) was 62. Even if it gets to 68 by tonight I’m still doing better than my last batch (pre-freezer) where I pitched at 72. ;D
