- In this video, I wanna share with you my first experience
fermenting in the new G4 Fermenator from Blichmann.
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When I got the G4 Fermenator, really,
the first thing that I wanted to do with it
was do a pressure fermentation, primarily a pressure lager.
Now, there were a couple things that I needed
outside of the standard unit to do that,
and one of those was the TriClamp Blichmann Spunding Valve.
And then I also got, for the aseptic valve,
I also got a male flare adapter,
that actually screws onto the aseptic valve,
and more on that here in just a little bit,
but outside of that,
my experience with the first fermentation
is gonna be stock, standard,
with no other purchase accessories
besides the two that I just mentioned.
Now, the first beer that I fermented in it
was a real simple brown lager,
which was actually part of another video,
and I'll link it up here in the description,
the video of the beer that I brewed on that.
I did kind of an experiment with the Brew In a Bag
and the BoilCoil, if you remember that video.
So what I did was I basically brewed the beer,
dumped it in there, in the fermentor.
I wound up with probably about 11 1/2,
almost 12 gallons, something like that,
and pitched my Diamond Lager yeast,
a couple of packets of that, and then as I usually do,
I wanted to go ahead and let the pressure build on its own.
And so I put the lid on, the clamp, all that stuff,
put the spunding valve on the top
and let it start to build pressure.
Now, one of the things that I did experience
with the fermentor was that it got to about 10 PSI
and it seemed like it wasn't going any higher.
And I was kind of curious about that,
and so I gave a little swirl to try to rouse
some of the CO2 in the wort.
And when I did that,
I started hearing a little bit of a hissing noise.
So I actually had to wind up tightening the clamp
down on the top of the fermentor extremely tight.
I mean, I'm talking like I was tightening it so tight
that I could barely turn it with the cross bolt
or crossbar on the buckle itself.
So that's kind of a tip for you, if you get one of these,
you're probably going to need to tighten the top down,
the band on the top, very, very tightly,
because until I did that, I was only getting about 10 PSI.
And then once I did that, I was able...
I wanted to ferment at 14 PSI anyways.
I was able to achieve the 14 PSI without any problem at all,
and let it ferment from there.
Now, the Diamond Lager yeast is really a beast,
and I wanted to have some of this beer ready
for a birthday party for my brother-in-law,
and so actually, I think it was about five or seven
days into the fermentation, it was pretty much done.
I mean, I took a sample,
and one of the things with doing a sample
on pressure fermentation, it's partially carbonated.
So if you do a hydrometer sample and you don't have
one of those fancy EasyDens or something like that,
then you're gonna need to remove the carbonation.
Otherwise, it may make your hydrometer float up,
and will give you an inaccurate reading.
So I did a little post on Instagram about how to do that,
and I actually used a device that I made
that I mentioned earlier, which is a swizzle,
as they call them, or a sampling coil,
as some of you might know it by.
But I used that male flare, a Duotight fitting,
and this is actually about nine feet
of EVABarrier tubing.
And so what this does, basically,
is it reduces the pressure so that when I pull
the sample off it's not completely nothing but foam.
And that actually worked really well
and I was able to take a gravity sample
and determine that it was completely fermented out.
Obviously, the beer was still young,
but I went ahead and kegged five gallons of it,
took it to the party...
Oh, one of the other things I had to do as well was,
it is carbonated somewhat,
but I still had to run my Blichmann Quick Carb
in order to bring the carbonation level up to a lager level,
'cause it wasn't quite there.
But I took the beer to the party.
And I'll be honest with you, everybody...
Some people said it was the best brown lager
or one of the best beers that they've ever had.
So, you know, they weren't BJCP judges,
obviously, but... (laughs)
It was still a little murky,
and it's still a little murky even now.
I've recently kegged the other five gallons of it,
but it was a good beer,
not a lot of sulfur or anything like that.
So as far as the pressure fermentation of the G4,
everything worked perfectly once I got that band
tightened and everything.
The aseptic valve worked very well for taking the samples,
and then also, using the male flare
on the aseptic valve to fill kegs,
I was able to do that easily enough.
Now, whenever I dispensed that first five gallons of beer,
I left the dip tube in a upper orientation
so that I wouldn't be pulling any of the trub or yeast
or anything like that out of the bottom of the fermentor.
Now I wanted to, before I dispensed the second
five gallons of the beer into a keg,
I wanted to go ahead and do a trub dump on it,
and you know, under pressure, (laughs) no problem at all.
One thing I forgot to mention that I did add also to use,
or that I used with the fermentor
for this particular process is,
Blichmann actually makes a yeast harvesting kit,
which is basically a inch-and-a-half TriClamp
with a one-inch hose barb and a one-inch,
like a short length of silicone tubing.
I definitely recommend either that or a 90-degree elbow,
because I've seen so many pictures of people online
taking a gravity sample right out of the butterfly valve,
and I mean, that thing will spray you
like a garden hose, (laughs)
so make sure you have something to direct it down,
so you don't get sprayed.
Anyway, so I did that and it worked really well.
I mean, I had to be very careful
with how much I opened the butterfly valve,
'cause I mean, like I said, it was under pressure,
and it kicked all of the yeast and everything out.
And I got a fair amount, probably, I'd say, about a third,
to maybe a half a gallon or something like that,
in the pitcher that I dispensed it into.
So once I did that, then I went ahead and hooked up
everything to dispense to the keg.
I used the same Duotight fitting
that I had on the swizzle,
and just put a short piece of EVABarrier tubing,
along with another Duotight fitting on the end
with a liquid ball lock on it and used that to fill the keg.
And then of course you do need a spunding valve on the keg
when you go to fill it, to hold pressure.
Otherwise, you might have some foaming in the keg
and you're not gonna get it full
without having a lot of foaming to maintain that pressure.
So transferred everything about 10 PSI, something like that,
until I actually, (laughs)
I need to get some way to detect whenever the keg is full,
'cause I actually got a little bit of beer and foam
into the spunding valve that was on the keg,
but not a big deal, so I knew the keg was completely full.
At that point, I still had quite a bit
of liquid left in the fermentor,
so I went ahead and just dumped all the rest of that out.
There was still a bit of yeast left in there.
Almost wound up with probably 3/4 gallon of just beer
and some trub and whatnot in the bottom of there,
but everything went fine with that.
As far as the inside goes,
after the fermentation was complete,
I mean, it was pretty clean, really!
I mean, it has a polished interior,
so it really seemed like nothing hardly stuck to the inside.
I had a very minimal krausen ring around the top,
and that was pretty much about it.
So what I did was I went ahead and just kind of rinsed
everything out with some hot water.
And then I set up a CIP ball,
which is also something that Blichmann does offer for this.
Now I'm not including it as part of the fermentation,
'cause it's just part of the cleaning,
but it's an accessory that you might want to check out,
and everything that I'm talking about,
I'll link it down in the description below.
One other minor detail with the cleaning, the CIP process,
you're gonna need something to connect
the lower butterfly valve to whatever your pump is.
Now, I use a cam lock, so I actually used an adapter
that is an inch-and-a-half TriClamp to half-inch NPT
for the connection to my pump,
but that's another thing you have to consider.
The other thing you have to make sure that you do,
at least in my opinion, when you're doing the CIP,
is you want to make sure that you open the PRV valve
and put it in its open position.
I've seen way too many images and stories of people
doing CIP with a closed, pressurize-capable system
and having the water cool down,
which actually makes it contract,
and actually causing the fermentor to implode.
So open the PRV valve.
It won't spray anything out,
because of the way the CIP ball works
and the way that the PRV valve is in there.
But that's just a tip, make sure you open the PRV valve
when you do the CIP with hot water
in case, you know, you don't want it to implode.
So I used the CIP ball, put some water in there.
I think my tap water was about 125,
something like that, degrees Fahrenheit,
and dumped some PBW in there, put the water in there,
probably about a gallon or two, something like that,
just enough to get it up to, I think it was,
the sampling port or the temperature probe area,
and cranked on my RipTide pump with everything hooked up
and I let it recirculate probably about 10 minutes or so.
Everything came out crystal sparkling clean,
no problems at all, just had rinse it down.
Obviously, you want to take all of this stuff apart,
you know, the valves and all those things,
take all the TriClamp stuff apart
and clean that individually,
but as far as doing the CIP inside,
the CIP ball worked great,
and everything came out really clean.
So I couldn't be happier with how that cleaned up,
because this thing is big and heavy
and you really don't want to be lugging it over to the sink
and dumping it out and doing all that stuff with it.
So my initial impression of the fermentor,
I mean, it met every expectation that I had.
The only thing that was a little bit of a surprise to me
or something that was kind of a learning curve
was having to tighten that band extremely tight.
I mean, it was very tight, and you know,
I have a bad habit of over-tightening things anyway,
so I was a little bit leery of that, but you know,
just make sure that when you tighten it,
that you tighten it very tight, and if you have any leaks,
you have to tighten it a little bit more.
So once I got past that little hiccup,
which wasn't really a big deal, in my opinion,
everything went flawless and had no issues at all.
So I definitely think it's a...
It's definitely a worthy competitor
in this market space that it's in,
price-wise and the features and everything that it has.
Now, be on the lookout for an upcoming video,
'cause I finally got all the accessories in.
When they sent it to me for review,
I got most of the accessories,
but the one accessory that I was lacking
was the cooling kit, and that was kinda...
I didn't really want to do an accessory video
until I had all of the accessories,
and the cooling kit is probably one of the things
that people are most interested in, in my opinion.
So I do have all that stuff now,
so be on the lookout for an upcoming video on that,
but you know, I'm happy with it so far,
and I'm really excited to do all the accessories,
(chuckles) especially the leg extension kit,
because I had to raise this thing up on the table
in order to do some of this video and stuff.
And even with only five gallons of beer in it,
left over after I dispensed the first five,
it is pretty heavy, (chuckles) so you know,
I think the leg extensions and the wheels and all that stuff
are gonna be awesome for this thing in order to make it
a little bit more viable to use in the brewery here,
so be on the lookout for that.
This has been Brian for Short Circuited Brewers.
We'll see you on the next video.