benzy4010

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Should I wait for krausen to fall

benzy4010

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It was 1034 gravity

mmonacel

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what's your expected final gravity? If you don't know that, then please provide:

Beer style
OG
Yeast used
recipe is nice

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FuelshopMcgee

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That is awfully an awfully high final gravity brother. The layer you see on top of your beer is the result of the krausen but no it does not always drop back down. Once you provide the info mmonacel asked for and we find out whether or not you're needing to ferment more you can cold crash your beer to drop as much as you can. When you go to transfer your beer you will be sticking the siphon under that layer on the top so as long as you keep the siphon submerged you shouldn't pick any of that up.

But it sounds to me as if you're fermentation is stuck. I'm going to guess that this was an extract batch which means the wort should be highly fermentable.

Can you also give the temp in which you're fermenting and how much yeast you used?

benzy4010

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It was a Belgian dark strong ale
It's a 5.5 gallons
All grain
I used a smack pack

benzy4010

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benzy4010

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mmonacel

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Well, a few things. This is a pretty big beer so my off the cuff would say that you have a stuck fermentation as Fuelshop suggests. You say you pitched a smack pack. I don't see the yeast type in the print out. I'm going to assume you didn't make a starter for this and you simply pitched a single smack pack. That would likely be part of the problem. In the future, you'll want to make a starter or at least pitch a few packs when you're this high up in the gravity range. The overabundance of food and high alcohol environment is going to stress out the yeast. Check out the Mr. Malty calculator (Mrmalty.com) for the correct pitching rates moving forward.

So:
OG of 89
Target FG of 23
Current gravity 34

Assuming you hit all your targets (or were relatively close) you likely would have a VERY sweet beer on your hands. I would suggest checking out threads on stuck fermentations for more suggestions, but I would suggest doing a few things:
- pitch another pack of yeast
- gently swirl up your fermenter to get the existing yeast back into the game
- keep your fermentation temps in the suggested range for the yeast

Good luck!

Hopefully that will get things kickstarted back up.

__________________
"Goin' downtown to the disco, gotta do it right away. Got a funky thing to get into, gonna blow my blues away!"

lud

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Actual mash temp?

FuelshopMcgee

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^Exactly..If you hit 149 you should have no problem fermenting that out some more as that temp will make a very fermentable wort. I agree that in the future use a pitching rate calc like Mrmalty.com (not affiliated) and make a starter w/ the correct amount of yeast. But for now simply picking up another smack pack would probably be beneficial. Also what temp are you fermenting at? You could also try raising the temp to kickstart fermentation again.