rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (05/01/84)
<> Once more 'round the business of fermentation. When we fill a line with >, let's quit. >>>=fisher!djl, >>=opus!rcd(me), >=(qubix!msc): >>> The masses in this country enjoy consuming vast quantities of a pale, >>> rather watery beverage which is the result of partial fermentation of >>> various grains... >> First of all, you don't "partially ferment" - fermentation is carried to >> completion, of necessity... >The American breweries (and many British ones, much to the annoyance >of CAMRA -- the Campaign for Real Ale) pasteurize their beer with the specific >intent of killing the yeast and STOPPING the fermentation so that >bar owners and publicans are not required to have to care for their beer >stocks. "Partially fermented" is an accurate description... It is NOT accurate; you can repeat it again and it STILL won't be right. For one thing, US keg beer is not (as a rule) pasteurized. Read that again. Not pasteurized. That means you can't take a chance of retaining any noticeable amount of fermentable material in the beer, or a little yeast might make it into the keg and it will overpressurize and overcarbonate it. The purpose of pasteurization is stabilizing the beer. Keg beer turns over much faster than bottles; the kegs are lightproof and kept cold; hence they don't need pasteurization. However, what CAMRA wants is the British custom of cask-conditioning - in which the fermentation is restarted in the keg (cask) so as to carbonate the beer from fermentation after kegging. For that reason, they neither pasteurize nor filter. They also use faster- working (ale) yeast than ours (lager yeast). Amateur brewers on either side of the Atlantic carbonate their beer this way, even in bottles - but they first let it ferment out completely, in order that the in-bottle fermentation be precisely controllable from batch to batch. -- ...Relax...don't worry...have a homebrew. Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303) 444-5710 x3086