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Been home brewing my beer for years with those kits you can buy.
Generally I am pretty happy with it all, sure saves a lot of money over the course of a year compared to buying cartons from the bottle oh.
I normally bottle carbonate it. Which means there is still yeast in the final product.
I know most commercially available beer has had the yeast in it killed.
Any home brewers kill the yeast in your beer and how do you do it and carbonate it?
Just curious why you want to kill the yeast? Without yeast you'll need to force carbonate the beer with CO2 in kegs.
Not sure how much of this you already might know but the most common and popular way to remove most of the yeast is by crash chilling and optionally using finings like gelatine after fermentation is complete before bottling. Crash chilling is bringing the beer down to close to 0 degC quickly in the fridge for a couple days to make the yeast drop out of suspension, and using finings like gelatine helps to floc the yeast into clumps so it drops better. After this you can then bottle carb and there'll still be enough yeasties in suspension to do the carbing and you'll still end up with a bit of sediment although less than if you didn't cold crash.
If you really want to kill the yeast, the most obvious way and the way the commercial breweries do is to pasteurise the beer. I've heard of guys pasteurising the carbonated bottles in the dishwasher on a hygiene setting or in a warm water bath at say 75 degC for 30 mins. Obviously this way you'll still have the yeast sediment in the carbonated bottles, and there's a risk of bottle bombs when raising the bottles to pasteurising temps. Not sure on an easy way to pasteurise before bottling, but if you did then you'd need to force carb with CO2. Maybe you could kill the yeast the way they do with wine or cider using sodium or potassium metabisulite (campden tablets) and potassium sorbate but I've not heard it done with beer.
There's always the filtering option too to remove almost all the yeast with something like a 1 micron absolute filter, but the easiest way to do this is if you're kegging as then you can force carb it in the kegs after.
When I was bottling I just did the cold crash, only tried gelatine once or twice. Now I'm kegging (although it's probably been a year since I did a brew) I cold crash and force carb in the kegs, end up with pretty clear beer, and don't have the worry of bottle bombs one day.
I want to kill the yeast probably for the same reason most commercial manufacturers do. So that there is no yeast in the final beer.
The reason being I reckon it can upset the gut. Say you had eaten something with sugar in it before hand and then have a few yeasty homebrews. The warm temperature of ones gut will get the yeast from the beer fermenting the sugars from the previously eaten food. As we know fermentation produces gasses and since human stomachs dont have an inbuilt airlock (like the ones you put on a homebrew keg) then the results can be quite explosive.
I have wondered about using those campden tablets and "racking" the beer a few times(like you would with wine) and then using co2 gas to carbonate it.
I like beer. The cost of the homebrew kits is really appealing and the product tastes great. Only downside for me is the explosive results which I don't get from regular commercially available beer. Sure the answer is in killing the yeast.
Wow! Thanks for that snippet kiwigeo.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiwigeo
Yeast can be removed by filtration and those who keg their brews can do this but don't forget you need the yeast for second fermentation if you bottle carbonate.
The yeast will become dormant and settle to the bottom of the fermenter when either it runs out of food (sugars) or fermenter temperatures drop to below that particular yeasts working temps.
My fermenter sits in an externally controlled chest freezer. I buy specific yeasts which give specific temperatures and set the controller to the low end or below. However many days the fermentation is active, I add on the same number (say 6+6 days) for settling in order to reduce the amount of sediment in the finished bottle yet still have yeast for 2nd ferment. I've left lager beers with specific low temperature yeasts in the fermenter for a month before bottling. This extra time allows for more settling and greatly assists in maturing the beer. In my opinion fermenter time is undervalued. (Armchair experts have scoffed at this)
From there you can bottle as normal. If you bulk prime like I do, you'll need a second fermenter-like container of course. Once bottled, mine begin to carbonate on day two but sit undisturbed for an absolute minimum of three months before I even think about them. I have some in the shed now 10 months old. Time and temperature are the secrets.
edit to note...
This is worth a read: http://www.30draugi.lv/meslaine/How_...ohn_Palmer.pdf