jerly

Recipes 

Hello, I am brewing a pilsner lager, it has been in the primary for about a week and a half. The activity in the airlock has slowed down considerably.

My question is, should the foamy krausen dissapear or does it ever stay on top, and you scoop it away. I can't tell if I should rack to secondary. I'd be happy to leave it, but I want to start another batch.

Lou

Recipes 

the krausen should fall when fermentation is nearly finished... if it's fallen and your airlock activity is slow, you should rack...

mysterio

Recipes 

I'm no expert so someone will probably elaborate on this:

The foam tends to dissapear or at least reduce after 4-7 days in the primary, and the residue will tend to stick to the side of the vessel. Don't scoop it off because if the dried residue mixes with the beer it will produce bitter off-flavours. Racking is personal preference really, you're not going to go wrong if you don't do it.

Kaiser

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Sometimes, the kraeusen doesn not disappear completely for a while even though the beer is pretty much done. Do you know the FG for your pilsner? In this case you could take a reading and see if you are there.

You could also take 2 readings preferrably a 1 or 2 days appart and see if the gravity is still falling.

Given that the airlock activity as slowed down considerably, you should be fine with racking it to the secondary. There should be enough yeast left in suspension to finish the job.

Kai

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jerly

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So, if I do rack to secondary, and the final gravity is where it should be, but the krausen is still there, should I remove it? Or just rack it with the krausen on there?

I may want to try to use the yeast again. Would I want to, since It seemes to be brewing funny?