Fermenting Cider under pressure

[blekk]

Hi all

Just wondering if anyone has fermented a cider under pressure? Trying to decide whether to use my spunding valve or normal air lock. Opinions greatly welcome

Cheers

 

[blekk]

So did some interwebs searching and it seems there's not much info on ciders under pressure so I'm going to give it a crack. Cider has just started bubbling away after 12 hrs in the fermenter so I've changed over to the spunding now.

 

[blekk]

Cider under 1psi

 

[wobbly]

At the risk of incurring the ire of some on this forum WilliamsWarn detail fermenting cider under pressure at 1.5bar using Fermentis SO4 yeast at 23C

Wobbly

 

[blekk]

At the risk of incurring the ire of some on this forum WilliamsWarn detail fermenting cider under pressure at 1.5bar using Fermentis SO4 yeast at 23C

Wobbly

Do you know how it turns out? Everything I had read points to yeast productivity dropping off significantly beyond 15psi (for beer anyway).

 

[Airgead]

My main question would be why? What advantage would you see in fermenting under pressure? Apart from being able to use a shiny piece of kit...

 

[mfeighan]

I have been fermenting under pressure recently.I don't brew ciders, but the idea is you can up the temperature without getting the off flavours that yeast throw. I know its brilliant in lagers and finishes quickly and cleanly as you can ferment @ like 14deg with the same results as fermenting at 10 deg.

My main question would be why? What advantage would you see in fermenting under pressure? Apart from being able to use a shiny piece of kit...

So to answer your question Air, a cleaner quicker ferment. It is also fun playing with toys

 

[Airgead]

Fair enough.

Yeast is yeast so it should work the same. The thing to bear in mind is that the production of esters etc is lower in ciders anyway as the precursors aren't there. So it might not give much benefit.

Win yeasts (which I use for ciders) also tend to ferment cleanly at room temp anyway. I ferment my ciders over winter at ambient temp (18-20 or so I suppose) using 71B and I don't find off flavours.

I can see the benefit for lagers but maybe not so much for wines/ciders. Though I'm sure some big commercial operation is doing it but the only source I can find says that its done to reduce attenuation and leave some residual sugars.

Cheers
dave

 

[wobbly]

Do you know how it turns out? Everything I had read points to yeast productivity dropping off significantly beyond 15psi (for beer anyway).

I only drink cider very very occasionally and have never brewed one so I can't offer any comments based on any personal experience. The stuff that I have read indicates that fermenting up to 3 bar will not detract from the yeasts ability to do its job. Above 3 bar and it will fail to do the job. Using the WilliamsWarn system fermenting up to 2.5bar has not resulted in any detrimental ferments for me (to date)

My main question would be why? What advantage would you see in fermenting under pressure? Apart from being able to use a shiny piece of kit...

If your system has the capability to allow you to stop fermentation at around 1008 so as to retain some residual sweetness and then crash chill to drop the yeast out of suspension and remove it from the fermentation vessel then fermenting under pressure has the advantage of producing a carbonated cider at your desired level of sweetness/dryness ready to be consumed (or bottled) without becoming "too dry" or producing bottle bombs resulting from secondary fermentation in the bottle

There are a couple of other active topics on cider being "too dry" and how to "retain some sweetness" which would appear to benefit from a set up similar to the above

Wobbly