Rocking the carboy

Just wondering since I've seen it suggested in other places that you should rock the carboy around a little bit with the airlock still in place just to get the yeast back up and into suspension so that they can proceed with fermentation better.

Do any of you do this? How much do you do it? When do you stop doing it?

My thoughts would be to maybe do it once or twice in the 1st week of fermentation and then to leave it alone but just would like to see what everybody else is doing. I'm on my 6th batch now and have never really done this but as I've been reading I've seen it mentioned in different places.

Thanks, Ryan

If you aerate properly, pitch the right amount of yeast, and ferment at the proper temper you should not have to. The only time I this would ever be necessary is if you got a stuck fermentation. It's really best just to leave it alone.

I'm rockin the carboy. Just like Michael Jackson did. I'm rockin the carboy. Except that he was talented.

JonK331 said:

If you aerate properly, pitch the right amount of yeast, and ferment at the proper temper you should not have to. The only time I this would ever be necessary is if you got a stuck fermentation. It's really best just to leave it alone.

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^^this^^ plus, aerating after the initial fermentation is complete can, and most likely will oxidize your beer. I've never had this happen to my brews but I hear the taste is pretty bad.

correct me if im wrong, but if the air lock is in place, and your yeast did a proper job efficiently attenuating, there should be little to no O2 left in the beer or in the head space. In any case, I try not to touch it at all after 3 days unless im moving it out of the swamp cooler after primary ferm. is complete

Technically O2 should be at a minimum since the air lock is in place. So you could swish or agitate the beer around a little bit without adding 02. Obviously later on when you are trying to get things to settle out in secondary you don't want this to happen at all.

But basic consensus is if it's bubbling and fermenting fine don't rock the baby!

Gaidin53 said:

Technically O2 should be at a minimum since the air lock is in place. So you could swish or agitate the beer around a little bit without adding 02. Obviously later on when you are trying to get things to settle out in secondary you don't want this to happen at all.

But basic consensus is if it's bubbling and fermenting fine don't rock the baby!

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Yes. The O2 being blocked is probably more true for carboys than buckets. I don't trust the seal on those buckets. Especially with temp changes or shaking.

Yeah, like folks have said, so long as you've aerated the wort when you pitch, and you've pitched enough yeast, 99% of the time there should be no need to touch your fermenter, period.

However, there is that 1% of the time when you get a couple weeks into the process and you find that your gravity readings are higher than expected - the beer is still somewhere north of 1.020 when you're expecting 1.013, for instance. That's the kind of situation where you might want to get the fermenter to a slightly warmer spot (warmer to encourage yeast activity) and give it a good swirl or two to get some of the yeast back in suspension.

But as a regular course of action? Nope - leave that fermenter alone! During the first week or two of any healthy fermentation, there's plenty enough acitivity going on in there to keep the yeast actively in suspension.