April 17, 2019 - 6:09am
How quickly does a barm preferment...?
How quickly does a barm preferment, made from equal amounts of barm to flour by weight, take to activate and be ready to use in a dough?
...and just to be sure is the barm the froth on top of the brewing beer? Or will the beer itself, at this stage, have enough yeast floating about to activate a preferment? How long does it keep in the fridge?
Thank you.
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There's a great deal of argument "out there" over the proper terminology in baking for barm, what it is and what it isn't. This is partly because the word "barm" has sometimes been used loosely in baking to mean any live starter for bread, even a sourdough starter.
Probably the strictest sense for barm, and it's certainly not a wrong sense, is "only the foam, from only the top, from only the fermentation process (not from the finished product), of only a traditional ale (not a beer)". That strict definition will never be wrong as such. However, it may not always tell you everything you need to know, because there are many less-strict senses, alternative senses, and just-plain-wrong senses, in which people are going to use the word.
I've been given a choice of two ales/beers ( not sure the difference) and while I can go for both I've chosen a slower fermenting beer/ale which produces more barm and is good for a few days longer.
Will take the ale with the barm to be the liquid in the poolish.
I'm not knowledgeable about brewing, but I believe that even though ale yeast and lager beer yeast are both the same species as far as a biologist is concerned, they are different strains that have been selected because they act differently - one thrives in warmer temperatures, one in cooler, and while one tends to rise to the top of the container, the other tends to sink to the bottom (I can't remember which is which). The finished ale/beer is obviously somewhat different as well.