Williamswarn Personal Brewery

[Beerisyummy]

It's interesting that it took 4 days for nottingham to get to terminal gravity at that temperature. When I have used it at anything 19+ it's mostly done in the first 36 hours. That's beers up to 1060.

Going off what I've been reading lately, the chart shows that the pressure was up to 22psi early on the second day. I'm guessing the graph isn't that accurate in regards to this, but it would still cause the yeast to slow down a fair bit.
That could easily explain why the Nottingham yeast took a little longer.

Wobbly, could you try running the pressure in the 5-10psi range for the first 3-4 days? I'd be really interested to see if that would speed things up, while giving you the cleaner results pressure fermenting is famous for.

There is a great thread on one of the US sites about pressure fermenting in sankey (CUB) kegs, which might yield some useful info. If you've got the time I think it might help you with the WW.
Alas, most of the info is written by dumb homebrewers.

 

[wobbly]

Happy to "consider", within reason, various options that people would like to see the impacts/effects of on the finished product

I don't do "big beers, hops above about 45IBU,sours or lambics" so any iteration of those will be non starters

The WW has about 35% head space above the 23 lt fill mark so some of the more aggressive yeasts such as Wy 3638 may be able to be accommodated to see what effects pressure has on the run away trend of this yeast.

Post what you would like to see tried and the format you would like the results in and I will see if/how I can combine that with future brews

Cheers

Wobbly

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Alas, most of the info is written by dumb homebrewers.

That really is a pathetic attitude. Does owning a WW all of a sudden make you a smart brewer...

 

[Parks]

That really is a pathetic attitude. Does owning a WW all of a sudden make you a smart brewer...

That is the attitude of the guy that makes the WW.

 

[Camo6]

That really is a pathetic attitude. Does owning a WW all of a sudden make you a smart brewer...

Check out WW's letter to Wobbly earlier in the thread for context, Stu. Just a bit of tongue in cheek is all.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

One would hope so.

 

[Beerisyummy]

Jesus Stu! Nobody wants to hurt you mate.

I thought you'd have read the letter by Ian Warn. If not you need to go back and have a read ,just for a laugh.

For the record. I DO NOT OWN A WWPB.
I'm using a keg with a DIY spunding valve and a fridge to do the exact same thing. The only differences are my lack of WW magic clarifier and the ability to watch the yeast collect.

I really like the equipment side of the WWPB.

 

[MastersBrewery]

So wobbly, was the taste profile where you wanted to be, or heading in that direction? After all most of us do this hobby for one reason, and that is to make better beers than we could normally buy at the local.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Jesus Stu! Nobody wants to hurt you mate.

I thought you'd have read the letter by Ian Warn. If not you need to go back and have a read ,just for a laugh.
.

I did, and was appalled by his comments.

 

[Beerisyummy]

In view of some of the negative comments, like it being an expensive kit machine etc., posted by some at the start of this topic (I acknowledge that there has been a number of posters that have added constructive comments also) I thought it would be beneficial to post some feed back from the system designer who I have been corresponding with

At the outset it is worthwhile restating Ian Williams qualifications and experience that in my view make him eminently qualified to make a lot of the points he does.

• Formal Degree in Food Technology
• Master Brewer from the Institute of Brewers London
• Brewing Consultant at Danbrew
• Brewing Consultant at Alfred Jorgensen Laboratory
• Brew Master at Hainan Asia Pacific Breweries
• Brew Master at Tiger Brewery Singapore
• Brew Master at DB Breweries

I brought this thread and comment to Ian's attention and the following is his response.

Okay so I read some of the comments ....all wrong and that's why I stay away from these guys....they're really dumb and don't understand beer making like a brew master
Examples

• The Cost. They have no understanding of what it costs to build something like this. It's expensive only because it's new. laptops came out at AU$25,000 in the 80's. The first flat screen was AU$30,000. That's just how it is until you're making 1000's per day. We've sold 370 of these units to 370 happy customers. The stainless cost us almost $1000 and that's first part of 100 parts
• The void does exist. 32% of New Zealand men are ex-home brewers. 0.3% do it. The fail rate is huge because people don't know how to brew. To solve this is what we have done but it can't be done for $500. These guys are rare because they stuck at it. But for every 1 of them there are 100 who quit
• You could set it all up your self but that's still DIY. Did you build your own oven, vacuum cleaner, fridge, espresso coffee machine, bread maker. We're an appliance as well as the worlds smallest brewery (from fermentation onwards). And we need to be doing it properly. And these guys have been brewing for years and got over the hump of making bad beers. Most men can't be bothered doing that. They want easy and properly. So I found what the reason were for 32% of all Kiwis quitting the hobby and solved it all at once
• The ageing is a myth thing I mean that you don't have to age beer to make it good. The myth is that it needs to stand for two months in a bottle. That's untrue. 95% of the worlds beers are not aged for long periods before bottling and sold. It's a simple fact. DB here makes beer sold to 1.5 million people each week and its made in 6 days. A dark beer like that guys Irish Red will be ok after 18 months as the stale flavours may be hidden but that doesn't mean it wasn't ok a week after it was bottled if he brewed it properly. His beer will still have staling aldehydes that have increased over time and if he thinks that's fine then great. Enjoy
• 2 - 3 months will not improve lawn mower beer. Beer is best fresh. The lawn mower beer will have increases in trans-2-nonenal, benzaldehde, 2 acetyl furan, all sorts of aldehydes. What these guys never mention is what about it is improved? They'll say "young beer flavours" and "it needs to mellow" or "soften the bitterness" such but never exactly what it is and if it was over the taste threshold for that chemical when bottled and whether they've measured it in a lab before and after 3 months and now its lower than the taste threshold and drinkable. If you're going to make a fresh brew that needs off-flavour aged out of it you're doing something wrong. That myth gets told over and over again
• Liquid yeast is really weak. Brewers use yeast only up to 5 days max storage. That's because intracellular glycogen reserves get eaten by the yeast and so the lag phase in the next fermentation becomes really long and fermentation fails. A vial or smack pack that is 6 months old has yeast that is not really vital. Maybe viable (live) but not vital (full of energy) and so it needs the aeration of a starter to get the remaining living cells to breed and make new fresh cells full of sterols and fatty acids for cell growth during the main fermentation
• You can use your own wort in this. Its fermentation onwards. All grainers buy this.
• Yes aging is good for special beers like old ales and lambics. But that's 0.1% of the world beer market so I was talking about the above for "normal" beers
• Commercial beers have a 450 million dollar turn over. To criticise them as something that is of no value is to just show a mind that works poorly. VB, Heineken, Budweiser, Corona are loved by millions of people and are valid beer styles. To knock one beer style over another is stupid. All beer is great. And to say 6 billion people have something wrong with their taste buds makes no sense. They are billion dollar brands because they are quality products. Fact. If you prefer an IPA ok, doesn't mean VB tastes like acetic acid.
• A guy made his 3rd batch of beer in one of our breweries and beat 45 of the worlds biggest breweries in a beer comp. He was the only home brewer to have ever done that in the history of brewing. The only other guy to have done that did it this year with one of our Gen2 machines. Both used our extract. The breweries they were up against were all grain brew houses worth millions. In that moment we showed that the idea that modern homebrew extracts is not as good as all grain brews is another myth told by the arrogant all grain home brewers in order to make themselves feel better about themselves. If there is a problem with our extract, the 20 beer judges in a blind beer tasting comp would have marked these guys beer down. Fact. A home brewers all grain set up will not be as good as a modern Krones or Briggs Brew house. So we beat the highest standard of all grain worts with extracts. What it shows is the evaporation process to make extract is of no consequence. As is the evaporation process during malting, hops drying and wort boiling. Our extract is also made from all grain in a brew house. So it's also all grain. the only difference is evaporation and rehydration. water molecules moving out and back in. No big deal

Feel free to post this if you want. You will fire them up no end. Would be fun to see the reactions. But don't worry about it. They are just internet trolls. Not my market. My market are smarter men than these guys. I look forward to you making great wort in the BM and great beer with our unit. You can't go wrong
Cheers
Ian

Food for thought

Wobbly

Just thought I'd bring up the relevant post. Saves people from reading the first 187 posts.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

The same people are still going to be appalled by his arogance. Nothing has changed there.

 

[Beerisyummy]

Happy to "consider", within reason, various options that people would like to see the impacts/effects of on the finished product

I don't do "big beers, hops above about 45IBU,sours or lambics" so any iteration of those will be non starters

The WW has about 35% head space above the 23 lt fill mark so some of the more aggressive yeasts such as Wy 3638 may be able to be accommodated to see what effects pressure has on the run away trend of this yeast.

Post what you would like to see tried and the format you would like the results in and I will see if/how I can combine that with future brews

Cheers

Wobbly

From all of my reading, I'm lead to believe that the added pressure during fermentation will subdue foaming in the FV. Too early to tell in my own experiment.

I'd like you to do a few basic lagers with your rig. Same BM routine each time. Then you play with the temps and pressures to see what happens.

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

From all of my reading, I'm lead to believe that the added pressure during fermentation will subdue foaming in the FV. Too early to tell in my own experiment.

I think I can unscientifically substantiate that. From a post I made to an ongoing thread on the Canberra Brewers forum:

I pitch a starter of 'cry havoc' yeast into 27l of wort at 17 degrees a bit before new years. After 24 hours the krausen was nearly at the top, so I switched to a blow off tube. I had the tube going into a bung in a glass sherry bottle. The krausen then backed off, but i left the blow off in place.

When I've been taking gravity readings, the beer has been carbonated, but it was only this morning I realised that I'd actually been brewing pressurised. I needed the blowoff for another beer today, so I released it and the fermenter let out a heap of gas and the replacement airlock went crazy.

Obviously the system wasn't entirely sealed, or else the glass would have smashed or the tap/blowoff would have burst, but it was a pretty good seal.

From what I've been reading, it actually is OK to ferment under pressure - it's how conicals work isn't it? You can ferment warmer, therefore quicker, without ester production and you can save the C02 (Unfortunately I am bottling some of the batch, so I can't utilise the built up C02). Discussion: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/66163 ... -pressure/

The one thing that stuck me as odd was the way the krausen, seemingly set to burst, backed off once under pressure. I wonder if the pressure kept the krausen in check. Thoughts?

 

[professional_drunk]

I thought the WW looked pretty cool. Like the nespresso of beer. If they bring the price down and I get to taste a sample of something made out of this, I could recommend this to a few people since I occasionally get asked about how to go about brewing. In saying that, if Ian is just going to call us trolls and get us offside, I might just tell people to buy a kegerator and buy commercial 50ltr kegs instead.

 

[wobbly]

I'd like you to do a few basic lagers with your rig. Same BM routine each time. Then you play with the temps and pressures to see what happens.

Not sure that other than documenting a few metrics of the fermentation phase such as "how long to reach terminal gravity etc" that much else will be achieved because of the following.

• What would be used as the base/control brew
• Just changing temperature and pressure at say 3 different points would require 15 brews and the way and rate I consume beer that would take over 12 months to complete
• Without doing some sort of laboratory analysis of the beer at a fixed number of days after reaching terminal gravity and or clarification how would you compare the characteristics between each brew
• Tasting samples and recording perceived differences 12 months apart might be a bit subjective other than something like "not sure I like this brew"
• Not sure that making 15 brews in the BM say 15 months apart will not have some impact on the results due to different malt batches and grain age etc.

Have a read of the following paper and see if that gives you the data you are after. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1992.tb01137.x/pdf

Not trying to poor cold water on your request I just think it is much more complex than "doing a couple of brews" if it is to provide any meaningful/useful results

Cheers

Wobbly

Oh Yeh your post on how to fix the "quote thing" worked for me today Thanks

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

I thought the WW looked pretty cool. Like the nespresso of beer. If they bring the price down and I get to taste a sample of something made out of this, I could recommend this to a few people since I occasionally get asked about how to go about brewing. In saying that, if Ian is just going to call us trolls and get us offside, I might just tell people to buy a kegerator and buy commercial 50ltr kegs instead.

Or a braumeister and kegerators

 

[Beerisyummy]

Hey Wobbly,

I prefer to have cold beer poured over my ideas. None of this water nonsense mate!
Thanks for the link. I'll have a read of it when I get the time.

I get your point about a lack of meaningful results. The results would be anecdotal at best although, I'm sure a few different brews would give you a feel for the variation in results.
Granted, there are many other variables that come into play, and recognising the difference in yeast character can be tricky.

In the meantime, I'm already fully underway with my own tests using similar methods to the WW, less the yeast dump/clarifier. In place of that, I just cold crash and transfer/filter into a post mix keg.
The last batch was tested out on the weekend, and it was near the end of the keg before people would believe I made it. The wheat beer helped convince them I had made them myself. 10 days to produce that lager.

Anyway, keep us all posted on how things go over time Wobbly.

PS. No tip, The pressure definitely helps with krausen. I'll need to test it myself with a 70% wheaty to find out how much exactly.

 

[pk.sax]

That Iam ******'s comments just show what he's aiming at.

Cashed up nimwits that can't handle figuring it out. If he can't stand admitting VB etc are poor excuses for wanting to even bother with trying to make beer then the OP must really evaluate why the heck he's trying to sing this one up. If you really think fermentation is so difficult that you need this fancy gizmo then why would you bother brewing in the first place!

I'd like to apologise for posting in here again, but the response of the Iam ****** is really the anti-thesis of why brewers brew and enjoy good beer. Get the poor ******* some gum boots!

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Can only agree PF....can only agree.

 

[wobbly]

Well I have completed my 4th 7 day brew/ferment and it's drinking very very nicely and in answer to your question in post 248 Brewmaster the beer taste and clarity is the best I've had from any of the 50plus previous brews and I acknowledge that doesn't necessarily mean that those previous 50 were good or great beers

Some one posted on another topic on this site that there are two important fundamentals to producing quality beer - consistent good wort production and controlled fermentation

The Braumeister has improved and simplified consistent wort production for a lot of this sites members and to date my experience with the WW is that it produces carbonated, clear and ester/fusel alcohol taste free beer ready for consumption in 6 to 7 days for an ale. I'm yet to attempt a lager/pilsner

The one issue I am yet to resolve in using the WW is to reduce the amount of break material I am carrying over from the BM into the WW as I have found that the sediment bottle doesn't contain it and it has been necessary to empty the sediment bottle 3 and some times 4 times a ferment. I use a hop sock and Brewbrite in the boil and attempt to whirlpool with little success. I am now considering purchasing a Blichmann "Hop Rocket" to both add additional flavour as well as act as a filter between the BM and WW. I have looked at the tank water filter units in the pumping section at Bunnings and Masters and whilst a lot cheaper at $20 they are only rated to 35C and it states on the packaging "not for potable water use"

It's a pity that most/all of the negative comments on this and other forums about the WW are being made by individuals that appear to have had no personal experience with either using the system or tasting the final product and therefore those comments are considered purely subjective and not based on any actual experience

Roger Millie an experienced AG conical brewer/kegger who has often posted on this site has recently had the opportunity to ferment one of his beers in a demonstration WW in Auckland and made the following comment in an e-mail to me after observing the process and tasting the final product.

Will definitely purchase one of these - I think the reductive fermenting is the best aspect - totally sold.

Here's hoping a few more will see the benefits of this machine and make the transition to a different (improved?) style of fermenting

For me the BM and the WW take out a whole lot of variables (that I'm not interested in) in making beer and allow me to concentrate on getting the grain bill and hop schedule right for the style of beer I want to make and enjoy drinking

Cheers

Wobbly