Fermenting-CO2 question

Hmmm... yep. If you didn't have an airlock, and the carboy was entirely sealed, something bad would happen. I would bet that the carboy would become "unsealed" before anything else.

Greg G.

Yes it would. I was thinking in terms of a sealed high pressure container that could handle thousands of psi. It was sort of a curiosity question.

Yeast generally die off at 90 psi or so.

Chris White indicated that 35 PSI can be toxic to yeast. One homebrewer had a fermentation stop at around 45 PSI although the yeast appeared to survive (continuted fermentation when the pressure was released).

I think there are a lot of variables besides pressure that come into play, including strain, health, temp., ABV, etc.

Andy

Well, take for instance Champagne. Which can ferment up to 90 psi before quitting.

Sure a lot of strains quit earlier than that, for various reasons, but I think we are talking about maximum pressure tolerance.

JEP62 wrote:

Yes, but the base cuvee is usually low alcohol and even then most winemakers add a large dose (relative to wine volume) of fresh, healthy, strong yeast to make sure the bottle fermentation completes. Again, I think more than just pressure comes into play here.

It depends on what the OP intentions are. I would say during a normal (if there is even such a thing as normal) fermenation there will be problems at a pressure lower than 90 PSI.

Andy