TIPS & TRICKS

Storage

Your Pinter Pack is designed to be left at ambient room temperature; there is no need to keep it in the fridge.

Pouring your Fresh Press 

When your Pinter Pack is almost empty, be sure to roll it up to squeeze out the remaining drops. To make sure your Fresh Press is fully mixed, we recommend the following: 

1. Shaking your Pinter vigorously for 60 seconds. Feel free to do this in different intervals if you cannot manage it all in one go! 
2. Use water which hasn’t been chilled. Consider using a mix of warm and cold tap water in the colder months.
3. Fresh Presses should not be stored in the fridge as this will only make them more difficult to mix - room temperature storage is best.

When undocking after brewing, if you find a small amount of Fresh Press mix in the Brewing Dock, please do not be alarmed. You will likely still have success - we recommend carrying on with the process and conditioning.

There’s no need to rinse your package out afterwards. We’ve done extensive testing in the Brewing Development team and have found that the new formulations consistently hit targets without rinsing the last few drops out.

Shelf Life

The shelf-life of a Pinter Pack is 9 months. You can check the Best Before date on the reverse of the Fresh Press.

Yeast

Good quality yeast is essential for a healthy fermentation and high quality Fresh Beer. We have four different yeasts which will come with your Fresh Press. These four are:

Loyalty - a mild english ale strain designed to accentuate malt or hop forward beers.

Balance - a delicate lager/ale hybrid strain that brews refreshing light beers.

Rise - a super flavourful and high ester strain designed for wheat and belgian beers.

Vigour - a fast fermenting cider strain.

Spark - a strain designed especially for lagers that produces very clean and crisp flavour characteristics over a wide range of fermentation temperatures.

Below is a list of which yeast pairs with each Fresh Press:

Bavarian Rhapsody - Balance

Haus Of Hops - Balance

Roadie Remixed - Balance

Sunlit/Out Of Office - Spark (formerly brewed with Balance)

Ancestor's - Loyalty

Big DIPA - Loyalty

Bigmouth Remixed - Loyalty

Brewgooder Hazy IPA - Loyalty

Dark Matter - Loyalty

House Pale - Loyalty

Lost In Translation - Loyalty

Public House - Loyalty

Space Hopper - Loyalty

Space Hopper West Coast Edition - Loyalty

Stars & Stripes - Loyalty

Tropical Debate - Loyalty

Winter Sun - Loyalty

Naughty 'N' Spiced - Rise

Stonebridge - Rise

Weiss Nights - Rise

Waltham Forest - Vigour

Whole Nine Yards - Vigour

Home Wood - Vigour

Keeping your area clean

Achieving a sterile environment is essential to a healthy fermentation. Typical household cleaning gets the Pinter very close, but using the purifier guarantees a sterile environment for a healthy fermentation and successful Fresh Beer.

Cleaning the slightly tougher bits

Any tougher areas may need scrubbing with a soft cloth or sponge and hot water. If you use soap, be careful to rinse it all out well.

If you are finding any parts especially stiff to put together and/or take apart, running them under water can act as a nice natural lubricant to help you.

Happy feet

If you are using a Pinter 2 and can feel water between the inner and outer casing, check out our advice here. If you are using a Pinter 3, you can now take off one of the rubber feet and drain this out - please see the diagram below. To avoid this, you should try and avoid submerging the Pinter fully in water.

Pouring your Fresh Press

When your Pinter Pack is almost empty, be sure to roll it up to squeeze out the remaining drops. To make sure your Fresh Press is fully mixed, we recommend the following: 

1. Shaking your Pinter vigorously for 60 seconds. Feel free to do this in different intervals if you cannot manage it all in one go! 
2. Use water which hasn’t been chilled. Consider using a mix of warm and cold tap water in the colder months.
3. Fresh Presses should not be stored in the fridge as this will only make them more difficult to mix - room temperature storage is best.

When undocking after brewing, if you find a small amount of Fresh Press mix in the Brewing Dock, please do not be alarmed. You will likely still have success - we recommend carrying on with the process and conditioning.

There’s no need to rinse your package out afterwards. We’ve done extensive testing in the Brewing Development team and have found that the new formulations consistently hit targets without rinsing the last few drops out.

Docking

If you are experiencing any resistance when docking your Pinter, we recommend applying a splash of clean water to resolve any resistance and, if necessary, place your Pinter on the floor facing up to get more leverage and Dock that way. Please do not use any oils or other lubricants as this can damage your Pinter.

Temperatures

We use very versatile yeasts, so generally brewing in a range of temperatures from 16-25 degrees will lead to successful results. Most normal rooms in a home should do the job to fall within that range. Boiler rooms, airing cupboards etc could be too warm, and places close to a window may be too cold. 

For some beers, higher or lower temperatures within this brewing range can be more or less suitable to help certain flavours develop.

For example, with Fresh Presses using Rise yeast, temperatures at the higher end can help more fruity flavours to develop. For Fresh Presses using Balance, temperatures closer to the lower end of this range can help to produce cleaner, crisper flavours.

Minimum vs Recommended Brewing Times

Developed times allow for a more complete maturation of the beer in terms of flavour, aroma, and appearance, and guarantees a more stable equilibrium between carbonation and head space. 

Brewing Activity - Noise

During the brewing stage, your Pinter may hiss/vent pressure out from the Carbonation Dial. This is a sign of fermentation taking place. If it is still hissing after the allotted time for brewing, or if there’s other obvious activity, your Fresh Press may still be undergoing fermentation and it would be wise to wait until this stops before moving onto the next steps. 

Brewing Activity - Foaming

If it starts foaming through your Carbonation Dial during brewing, this is a sign of a healthy and vigorous fermentation, and is nothing to worry about in terms of your brew, but could be a sign that you have overfilled your Pinter. When this happens, make sure you clean your Carbonation Dial from both sides when you next clean your Pinter.

What is Cold Crashing?

This is where you condition your Pinter with the Brewing Dock still attached. It is not an essential step in brewing, however it can improve the quality of your Fresh Beer further.

How do I do it?
If your preference is clarity (and your fridge allows), you can condition your Pinter in the standing position with the Brewing Dock attached for the first day of conditioning at 0-4C. Below 0C could be harmful for your Pinter!
After the first 24 hours, you can then detach the Brewing Dock and continue conditioning as normal in the horizontal position.

Hopper

If you have a Hopper, add this just before you detach the Brewing Dock. It is far easier to add a Hopper when the Brewing Dock is connected, and any earlier and you will lose more of the hoppy goodness! If you find that the hop flavour can be a bit much for your tastes, we'd recommend extra conditioning as opposed to putting the Hopper in earlier; this way you get more control over your Fresh Beer.

Why would I Cold Crash?
This can help to improve clarity and flavour as the cold temperature encourages more trub,  (spent yeast and other waste), to drop out of the Pinter and into the Brewing Dock before it is detached.

Want to get deeper into Cold Crashing? Click this link here to get the full low down.

Undocking

When undocking after brewing, if you find a small amount of Fresh Press mix in the Brewing Dock, please do not be alarmed. You will likely still have a success - we recommend carrying on with the process and conditioning.

Why do I need to condition?

Prior to tapping, conditioning is an important step not only for the maturation of your Fresh Beer and certain flavour development, but also to achieve the appropriate pressure and carbonation levels in the Pinter. 

Carbon Dioxide can dissolve into beer more easily at cooler temperatures, so without conditioning you may not reach the ideal level of carbonation.

The perfect temperature
It is recommended that you condition as stated by the recommended brewing times at fridge temperature, from 0-4C.

Getting a smooth pour

If your Fresh Beer fobs (foams excessively) when you first tap it, then it may be worth extending your conditioning time and/or checking that the temperature in your fridge is cool enough before adjusting your pouring technique.

What to do if the Pinter stops pouring early

If your Pinter seems to have stopped pouring, it may need to warm up slightly to increase the head pressure inside to push it out, or will need fully venting by switching the Carbonation Dial to OFF. After every pour, change the Carbonation Dial setting back to the setting for the particular Fresh Press.

The right temperature
Serving temperature is very important. Fridge temperature is recommended for best pouring results.

Using the Active Pour Tap

The Active Pour Tap allows you to take complete control of your tapping experience. The Active Pour Tap is very sensitive and can deal with all the pressure gradients as you go from a high pressure, incrementally down to zero pressure. With the new APT, going straight to 45 degrees may pour your Fresh Beer at too high a flow rate, leading to fobbing (excessive foaming). The higher the flow rate you'd like, the more you need to open the tap.

The below video shows you how to insert the Active Pour Tap into your Pinter 2 or 3, as well as clipping the handle onto the tap.

Getting the perfect pour

For the perfect pour, position a glass under your tap at 45 degrees. To start the pour, lift the handle upwards so that it's in the unlocked position and pull it forwards quickly to 45 degrees - if you move it gradually, fobbing (excessive foaming) may occur. When you notice that the pressure has decreased, you can use the tap’s second pour position by moving it to 90 degrees. If the beer flow reduces further and you still have beer left in your Pinter, make sure the tap is locked, turn the Carbonation Dial setting to ‘OFF’ and then tap again at 90 degrees to empty the remaining beer. After every pour, change the Carbonation Dial setting back to the setting for the particular Fresh Press.

Maximising the flavours

All of our Fresh Presses are designed especially to work with the varied levels of water hardness up and down the country from the tap. However, to maximise the subtle balance flavours of our lagers, try using filtered spring water rather than tap water.

Don't chuck the trub

Instead of washing away the trub (the remains of your Brewing Dock after the Brewing stage), here are a couple of things you can do to make the most out of a Fresh Press.

1. Try spreading it across your garden or adding to your compost heap for a nutritional boost. 
2. Use your trub as an ingredient in baking bread. All you need as well as your trub is flour and salt. This is because the trub contains inactive yeast, a key ingredient in bread.

For the full scoop, check out our blog on this here 

Replacement parts

If you ever find that you have misplaced a part, a part has become damaged or you have any questions about your Pinter and its parts, you can reach our Customer Service team via email, phone call or web chat. They are available Monday-Friday 9am-5pm. You can find their details along with all of our helpful FAQs here.

All of our replacement parts are listed on our website and available to purchase here. Replacement parts available range from seals to Brewing Docks.