Krausen less fermentation

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jfr1111

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I know it's "normal" to sometimes get fermentation without any krausen, but has anyone figured out possible causes to the phenomenom ? I brewed two beers this weekend: a saison and a milk stout. Both used pils as their base.

The saison developped 4 inches of sticky, gooey krausen on top of the beer.

The milk stout, not so much. I pitched @ 64F with rehydrated S-04 at 5:00 pm Sunday and fermentation started within 5 hours. It developped a good amount of the first foam before the krausen, but there's no krausen and the fermentation is VERY active. The CO2 escaping sounds absolutely nuts, like champagne degassing, and I see a lot of activity, but there's no gunk around the edges and no yeast on top.

I googled for the problem and found this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-no-krausen-during-fermentation-445513/, which is also about krausen less fermentation and the author notes that:

a) The beer had lactose, like mine.
b) The wort produced a lot of foam, like mine did. It was crazy. The hydrometer sample still had foam blocking the reading after 6 hours standing at room temperature in the test jug.

Just to get it out of the way, I don't use any soap of any kind in my process and I didn't use any detergent on any tools or equipment between the two brew sessions. I rinsed my kettle and mash tun with scalding water and scrubbed on Saturday after brewing the Saison, knowing I would probably brew the next day.

Anyody has similar experiences with lactose ?
 
UPDATE: Checked this morning. Activity has all but ceased in the bucket, so I took a reading expecting it to be finished, but the gravity of the beer is 1.048 from 1.056... A lot of what seem like yeast pellets are floating around in the wort, like they never rehydrated. I had observed a good portion of the yeast didn't rehydrate in the water solution I made, but I chucked it to having the water a tad too cold and not stirring enough...

It reminds me a lot of the batches I lost to Notty years ago when I started. Seems like I had a bad pack. US-05 to the rescue tonight if things don't budge.
 
Sounds like the yeast wasn't entirely rehydrated, you should be gently shaking (not stirring) the yeast until it is entirely wet (it will probably sink to the bottom once wet, then rise back up. If the yeast is good, you should see bubbles rise to the top of the water after 10-20 minutes. Beyond that, S-04 is fairly well known to stall, so a good shake may be all that it needs to get going again.
 
I think the problem might lie not with the yeast, altough it really had trouble rehydrating and it's the first time I've seen that with S-04, but with my mash temperature.

I pitched a starter of US-05 at high krausen yesterday evening and nada, gravity hasn't changed a point tonight... I mashed at 158F but I guess my thermo might be in need of serious calibration (in the garbage). If the mash temperature was not 158F, but really 164F and upward, I guess I don't have much in the way of fermentable sugars left in the wort. Combine that with the lactose, and I can see why the yeast mhight not throw a krausen and why they would stop.

By the way, S-04 stalling is new to me. Ive used for more than 20 batches and it always attenuates in the 75-78% range for me (if not hgher) and ferments completly in 36-48 hours after reaching high krausen.

I'll let that thing ride but I don't have much hope for it. I might try to rack it onto a 3711 slurry, but I'm firmly in "save the beer" mode right now and won't try to judge or tweak the recipe with that batch.
 
So basically nothing is fermenting at all? Even a mash at 164 should have fermentable sugars, if nothing else the alpha amylase would kick in a bit and since enzymes aren't denatured immediately you'd get some beta activity too. First, let's make sure your equipment is correctly calibrated, make sure your hydrometer is reading 1.000 at 60F with tap water, if it's way off well, obviously then there's your problem. If the hydrometer is correct, and really it should be since you read the OG and it was much higher than 1.000, then we have to assume yeast is your issue, or at least yeast health is your issue and that suggests something is killing your yeast. Did you use any chemicals like bleach on your equipment?
 
Calibrated my thermo yesterday and it is reading fine for ice, but it IS reading low for boiling water (about 208F). The beer was pretty much done at 1.046, even with the addition of US-05. I'm sure this was a combination of factors:

a) Yeast health: the package was an older one, expiring in March 2015 and it exhibited quite a strange character during rehydratation.
b) Using lactose and crystal malts in the malt, about a pound each.
c) Mashing probably way too high due to a faulty reading.

Quite strangely, I was adamant about using acidified bleach user before I took my two year hiatus from brewing and now I have switched to Star San, so it can't be that. I know how to work concentrations, having been trained, albeit briefly, as a chemist.

* I say was because it was dumped 10 minutes ago on my lawn. The only batch where I had any kind of stalling problem I ended up dumping after 3 months and regretting every bottle I've drank of it. I'm just not to keen on having essentially unfermented sweet wort for more than 4 days lying around for anything to populate it, plus it'll give me an opportunity to brew something else.
 
I use lactose in several different beers and haven't experienced lack of krausen in any, do you use ferm-cap? That can reduce krausen quite a bit
 
Your rehydration water should be at 104F and make sure you don't use distilled/RO water.

Did you mash the Saison with the same thermometer? Any iodine or hydrometer testing during the mash?

You might try an iodine test now to see if there is residual starch in your wort.
 
The beer was dumped. I rehydrated cold because I was distracted, a mistake I will not make again, altough rehydrating cold had always worked in the past.

My two batches of saison were mashed with the exact same thermometer, as were all the other AG batches I've ever made, but this was two years ago and the thermo might have started acting wonky in the meantime.

I went back through my brewing notes and found one other stalled fermentation, a scottish 60 shilling which never fully attenuated. My notes do not say if the beer threw a krausen of not. My notes say that the mash temperature was 158F...
 
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