Gents (and ladies),
I recently spoke to a brewer concerning the process behind making one of my favorite barley wines and he brought up something that seems to be a bit of a foreign concept to home brewers;
He mentioned that it took a lot of work to get to the final gravity (13.5% abv) and to do so they "recirculated active fermentation" for a number of days while adding measured amounts of both oxygen and nutrient charges.
I'm assuming he literally means pumping the wort while the yeast is in the active fermentation stage to keep it suspended, thus increasing its effectiveness especially while adding more oxygen and nutrients. Does anybody here have experience doing this?
I'm guessing many here would say "YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" without ever having tried it, so I'm looking for some evidence that this does indeed work and serves a meaningful purpose with regards to attenuating big beers sufficiently.
Any feedback is appreciated! Especially with regards to how it's done! I'd hate to reinvent the wheel on this if it's been done successfully on a small scale before. I did a number of searches on the web for this, but so far I've only come up with articles on Burton Unions (which I now must try as well!).
Thanks!
I recently spoke to a brewer concerning the process behind making one of my favorite barley wines and he brought up something that seems to be a bit of a foreign concept to home brewers;
He mentioned that it took a lot of work to get to the final gravity (13.5% abv) and to do so they "recirculated active fermentation" for a number of days while adding measured amounts of both oxygen and nutrient charges.
I'm assuming he literally means pumping the wort while the yeast is in the active fermentation stage to keep it suspended, thus increasing its effectiveness especially while adding more oxygen and nutrients. Does anybody here have experience doing this?
I'm guessing many here would say "YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" without ever having tried it, so I'm looking for some evidence that this does indeed work and serves a meaningful purpose with regards to attenuating big beers sufficiently.
Any feedback is appreciated! Especially with regards to how it's done! I'd hate to reinvent the wheel on this if it's been done successfully on a small scale before. I did a number of searches on the web for this, but so far I've only come up with articles on Burton Unions (which I now must try as well!).
Thanks!