Open Ferment Room Construction

[SeattleBrewer]

Hear ye all who ferment openly!

We are building out our brewery and I have the basic idea of how to construct and vent the positive pressure room that will house our 20 bbl jacketed open fermenter. However, I would love to hear what other people have done and are doing in this regard, as to maybe avoid some pitfalls that you may have come across.

Currently, we are planning on a sealed room, except for vents near the floor that will be covered with a tight screen to (hopefully) prevent buggies from entering. We have a great HVAC currently being installed, and we were planning on routing a duct to the room and fitting a tight (hopefully) HEPA filter screen on the output. This would come in about half way down the wall as to not blow directly over the open top. So this should create a constant positive pressure environment and push out Co2 as it is created using clean air. Note: Proper safety precautions will be taken when entering the room to avoid Co2 inhalation. I've been brewing professionally for 6 years, and I'm not planning on inhaling any more Co2 if I can help it...

So please tell me all about your open fermentation rooms!

Thanks,
Greg

[Benjybo]

Ours is seriously nothing fancy at all just a large room, open to the rest of the brewery. Definitely no guarantee of positive pressure, no hvac filters, no hoax. And we have been doing this for over 20 years now with almost zero contamination issues, with only a few instances of wild yeast contamination of our house yeast.

We generally find that the thick krausen which forms almost acts like a lid, and with the co2 blanket that sits on the top of that nothing gets near it. When it's hot we do get a few flies getting into the fermenter room, but when you watch them they stay well away from the open tops. I suspect they get close enough to see the co2 levels rise and then retreat.

Yeast really flourishes in the open tops, and we have had the same yeast going from skimming for about 10 years now (with periodic acid washing).

So as with anything it's keeping on top of hygiene and making sure anything you use around the open tops is sterilised even if you don't intend stick it in the fermenter - because there's a strong chance it may get dropped in!



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[uptown brothers]

Hear ye all who ferment openly!

We are building out our brewery and I have the basic idea of how to construct and vent the positive pressure room that will house our 20 bbl jacketed open fermenter. However, I would love to hear what other people have done and are doing in this regard, as to maybe avoid some pitfalls that you may have come across.

Currently, we are planning on a sealed room, except for vents near the floor that will be covered with a tight screen to (hopefully) prevent buggies from entering. We have a great HVAC currently being installed, and we were planning on routing a duct to the room and fitting a tight (hopefully) HEPA filter screen on the output. This would come in about half way down the wall as to not blow directly over the open top. So this should create a constant positive pressure environment and push out Co2 as it is created using clean air. Note: Proper safety precautions will be taken when entering the room to avoid Co2 inhalation. I've been brewing professionally for 6 years, and I'm not planning on inhaling any more Co2 if I can help it...

So please tell me all about your open fermentation rooms!

Thanks,
Greg

What are you doing about drainage? my plan was to run brewery hose from the (250 gal horizontal dairy tank in my plan) fermenter outlets (which I assumed would be the bottom port, and maybe a racking arm from a second, added port), wondering how effective that will be. Didn't know how else to maintain the microbial integrity of the closed room, or positive pressure in the room, for that matter. But--You gotta clean the tile, where does that waste water/pbw/sanitizer go? So I figure the whole room is sort of your fermenter and like a fermenter it would be nice to be able to CIP it...which would mean a (stainless, sealable?) drain outlet, maybe out of the low point of the entire room, I would think. Maybe with a triclover fitting on the outside wall, to which you could attach a hose leading to the trench drain (or to a CIP tank?).

[GlacierBrewing]

Ours is seriously nothing fancy at all just a large room, open to the rest of the brewery. Definitely no guarantee of positive pressure, no hvac filters, no hoax. And we have been doing this for over 20 years now with almost zero contamination issues, with only a few instances of wild yeast contamination of our house yeast.

We generally find that the thick krausen which forms almost acts like a lid, and with the co2 blanket that sits on the top of that nothing gets near it. When it's hot we do get a few flies getting into the fermenter room, but when you watch them they stay well away from the open tops. I suspect they get close enough to see the co2 levels rise and then retreat.

Yeast really flourishes in the open tops, and we have had the same yeast going from skimming for about 10 years now (with periodic acid washing).

So as with anything it's keeping on top of hygiene and making sure anything you use around the open tops is sterilised even if you don't intend stick it in the fermenter - because there's a strong chance it may get dropped in!



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'll second what Benjybo has said. I worked in a large micro years ago that had several "open" 18bbl fermenters. We would hand scrub them between brews. The lids were not "sealed" but rather just rested on the tops. No positive pressure, no hvac filters, no infections. The krausen really does act like another lid. Make sure you have clean, scrubable walls, self-draining floor, good floor drains=keep the room clean. Open fermenters have been the norm around the world for hundreds of years. Relax, don't worry, have an open fermenter!
Prost!
Dave

[SeattleBrewer]

Drainage

Hey Uptown,
We have a sloped floor that runs to a drain. It's a bit away, so I'll be using vinyl braided dump hose to run it to the drain. The fermenter has about a 50% headspace capacity for krausen, so that should keep everything in and not messy (knock on wood). Our strains aren't too foamy so we should keep it clean.