Pressure Fermentation - Why Did I Decide To Do It?

Fermenter King Junior on its First Brew Day

As of the date that I've written this article, I've only been brewing for 11 months! So yeah, if your reading this anytime in the future i'm not an "expert" yet, whatever that means! But in my first 11 months I've now clocked up 23 beers of varying styles, sizes and methods, in fact i think I've already brewed every way possible except in a three vessel systems and in my toilet. Ok, so maybe the toilet thing was a bit too much but let's just say that I've had a world of experience in my first 23 brews. My first batch was an all grain brew using a 5L small batch kit I bought from a shop in Sydney. The brew day was clumsy and nerve wracking to say the least, but the beer i produced in that first bottle i cracked brought a literal tear to my eye. I wasn't going to win any awards, but it was a malty/hoppy flavor bomb that blew away any fears i had that brewing at home couldn't produce quality beer. In fact the experience egged me on the go bigger and harder way faster than I probably should've! But that my friends is a story for another day, today we will focus on my first experience pressure fermenting.

Fast forward 6 months and roughly 8 beers brewed and I started taking an interest in fermenting beer in pressure vessels. Pressure fermentation has been around for quite a while, many years in fact, but its the affordable PET plastic vessels that have appeared in the last few years that have made pressure fermenting an affordable option for home brewers around the world. Probably the most famous was the original Fermentasarus which was made by Keg King Australia several years ago, and also several years before I got back into home brewing. When i fist started home brewing again in July 2019 I purchased a 5L small batch brewing kit from a company in Sydney that came with a 5L glass carboy, and i had a romantic idea that i was going to brew lots of amazing and unique 5L batches of beer for the first couple of years. Up-sizing my brewing "system" wasn't even on my radar back then. But as we all know, home brewing beer requires a lot learning and where else do you go to get good up to date learning than YouTube, and once on YouTube I started to realize pretty quickly that their was a whole world of brewing options for the keen home brewer!

Pretty soon I was watching videos of people fermenting in everything from plastic buckets to glorious stainless steel conical's and everything in-between. I was captivated and entranced by a world of brewing bling and my mind was quickly formulating plans and reasons for purchases and upgrades, (it pays to plan ahead for these conversations when you're married!) And out of all the different fermenting options out there, the two that got my attention the most were the stainless steel conical's, especially the famous brew bucket by SS Brewtech, and the PET plastic pressure vessels made famous by Keg King and Kegland. I was torn. I read articles where people were still brewing in basic plastic buckets and producing great beer, but then i'd read articles by people who succumbed to the bling and were now proud enthusiasts of their new equipment and who were shouting the virtues of its presence in their brew sheds. What is any mere mortal to do?!

Well as luck would have it I would go through a rough patch were I lost a couple of beers due to infections and weird off flavours. Why was that lucky? Well it helped me to refocus my attention on the brewing basics and it made me analyze my processes to work out were i was falling short. After all it doesn't matter what bling graces your brewery, at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the beer produced, and its it drinkable? My solution at the time was to revert to brewing fresh wort kits to concentrate on my fermenting and sanitation practices and it worked. I produced a couple of cracking beers from fresh wort kits but there was one small niggling issue, the kits i brewed were highly hopped Red IPA's and in both batches I noticed the dreaded signs of oxidation! It wasn't so much the flavour as it was the colour, or should I say the muddy colour of the beer from my bottles that got me thinking again about pressure fermentation. 

The Results of my First Pressure Ferment!

Add to this my desire to brew lagers quicker (i'm quite fond of a crisp lager or pilsner), and my desire to brew more efficiently, and it started to become apparent to me that pressure fermentation was something that I had to look into more. From this point onward I started watching every video and reading every article I could find about every type of home-brew-level pressure fermenting vessel there was. I looked at converted kegs including corny kegs and "kegmenters", as well as PET vessels like the fermentersaurus and fermzilla, both with and without collection containers. But in the end it was two things that sealed the deal for me when it came to the right vessel for my situation. Firstly i wanted a vessel that wasn't too wide, one that was more corny keg like but without the solid dip-tube that could also double as a serving vessel. And secondly I wanted to brew a little bit less in volume than I had been already brewing! I started out with a 5L small batch kit and I still liked the idea of brewing in smaller volumes and i was finding the 23L I was brewing was probably 5 litres more than I needed per batch. It was at this point when I decided that the Fermenter King Junior was the right solution for me!

Now I know what your going to say, this is a bloody sponsored ad for Keg-King! All I can say in reply is that I purchased everything myself, and I have no affiliation with the company who makes these fermenters. This is literally my experience after 11 months of brewing, and now that i've got my first pressure fermented batch done and dusted I can say without hesitation, that it was the best decision i've made! Well, the best decision since I started home brewing again anyway! :-)

Cheers, and Happy Brewing!