How I cured my Stuck Fermentation...(No, not beano)

I chalk it up to what I'm calling "Beached Yeast".

I brewed up my Belgian Wit again last week...same exact recipe as three weeks before. That first brew was done fermenting and in the secondary in 5 days.

This latest brew was identical, except I pitched in one/half the yeast cake from that first Wit that had been on a starter (WLP400). The fermentation took off right away and within 24 hours, I had a krausen blowing off. I figured this would be a record short fermentation.

Several days later (3) , I took a reading and my gravity had dropped...6 points...

WTF. All that show and no go? Over the next 4 days, the gravity was dropping like 2-3 points a day and eventually stalled out at 1.023. So I was looking at the fermenter last night and it struck me just how much creamy krausen residue was sticking to the walls of the fermenter.

Could it be that my yeast took off so fast that it essentially "beached" itself on the glass. I decided to give the carboy a gentle rocking back and forth and was able to wash down that residue back into the beer. This huge amount of white cloudy substance went cascading to the bottom. Within 15 minutes, my airlock was burping once every 3 seconds.

This morning, my airlock was filled with krausen "juice". I took a reading and in the last 12 hours, my gravity has dropped 4 points and the sample tastes substantially less sweet.

Has anyone else heard of or experienced the curse of the "Beached Yeast"?

Notice the slow rate of fermentation on my sophisticated beer-log.

Thats actually happened to me once before. The damn beer took off so hard that a lot of the yeast stuck to the side of the fermenter! I didnt really notice it until I racked to secondary. There was a MASSIVE yeast cake above the beer and barely a dusting of sludge at the bottom of the bucket. FG worked out ok but I did let it go for like 3 weeks total between the two containers. Now... I usually give all of my batches a gentle stirring ~3 days into primary to churn up the yeasties and wash off the sides a bit.

I'm going to have to make this a routine for my high krausening brews.

Interesting! Never seen it, but the picture proves it!

That is something I would have never thought of. In reality it makes perfect sense, a top fermenting yeast and most of it gets stuck up on the sides of the container. I would have thought there would be so many yeasties in a fermenting batch that it wouldn't matter.

This may be the solution to more than one stuck fermentation, and it beats the hell out of Beano. (I am very anti-BEANO, but that's just me).

My 3CPA was pitched on a cake and the lid & upper edges were caked with yeast about 1/4 inch thick. Had about 3 inches of krausen on top of the pail, as well. There was still plenty of yeast in the wort, so it finished fine. Major mess though, I'm glad I put it in the sink at the very beginning and stuck a glass over the airlock.

I think prolly what actually happened is you swirled the dropped out yeast back into suspension. Some yeasts flocc so quickly that you have to stir it up to get it going again.

Dude said:

I think prolly what actually happened is you swirled the dropped out yeast back into suspension. Some yeasts flocc so quickly that you have to stir it up to get it going again.

Click to expand...

Not exactly. I did the old stir thing with the racking cane twice. That didn't work. There was really no fallen yeast to speak of.

I couldn't figure out why such a "visually" active fermentation was so slow according to the numbers.

It wasn't unitl I swirled the carboy and watched that creamy solution cascade downward that things began again.

"Beached Yeast". Not sure it's a term or a normal occurance, but I'm going to add it to my troubleshooting catalogue.

I just took another reading, 24 hours post swirl and my gravity has dropped 6 points since last night. That's as much as it dropped the 3 days prior....

McKBrew said:

This may be the solution to more than one stuck fermentation, and it beats the hell out of Beano. (I am very anti-BEANO, but that's just me).

Click to expand...

Everybody is anti-Beano. But when you are facing a stuck fermentation, it's a heck of a lot better than turning your beer into fertilizer. Besides, Beano is alpha amylase which is the enzyme in barley that turns malted grain into sugar. Nobody likes using it, but sometime when you've tried everything else and run out of options, go ahead and use your beer as fertilizer if you'd prefer, but I'd rather try and salvage it with Beano first.

Toot said:

Everybody is anti-Beano. But when you are facing a stuck fermentation, it's a heck of a lot better than turning your beer into fertilizer. Besides, Beano is alpha amylase which is the enzyme in barley that turns malted grain into sugar. Nobody likes using it, but sometime when you've tried everything else and run out of options, go ahead and use your beer as fertilizer if you'd prefer, but I'd rather try and salvage it with Beano first.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've probably annoyed all of you to hell about my Beano opinion, I was just pissed because it didn't help me and I had to dump 50 bucks worth of brew down the drain anyhow. No more Beano bitching from me.

Thanks Munch, another tool for the box.

Well, I brewed my wit two weeks ago with pretty much your recipe, racked it after a week b/c I needed my primary carboy and it was still going, in fact, had to put a blowoff tube on the secondary, this weekend it was still fermenting, and last night I did the same thing you did, this morning, was blessed with a sight much like yours...man this is taking forever to ferment...mine never got stuck though...

ColoradoXJ13 said:

Well, I brewed my wit two weeks ago with pretty much your recipe, racked it after a week b/c I needed my primary carboy and it was still going, in fact, had to put a blowoff tube on the secondary, this weekend it was still fermenting, and last night I did the same thing you did, this morning, was blessed with a sight much like yours...man this is taking forever to ferment...mine never got stuck though...

Click to expand...

Yeah, I really think that Wit yeast is so lively, it just parks itself up top. My first wit had that same "second-coming" krausen effect.

It'll be worth the wait though. I can taste that my current batch is drying out and the orange and coriander are starting to come through...where two days ago, it was way too sweet.

Here's a look at my sophisiticated fermentation log. I did my swirl the evening of the 7th.

This post may have saved my sanity last night. After an afternoon of happy bubbling, late last night all activity seemed to stop. I could see the little yeasties had been brought up by my hop sediment and weren't getting a lot of contact with the wort. I gave it a good swirl and things were going great again this morning. My concern is having to do this again though. Is this kind of disturbance during fermentation a problem, especially if required several times?

Nate1977 said:

This post may have saved my sanity last night. After an afternoon of happy bubbling, late last night all activity seemed to stop. I could see the little yeasties had been brought up by my hop sediment and weren't getting a lot of contact with the wort. I gave it a good swirl and things were going great again this morning. My concern is having to do this again though. Is this kind of disturbance during fermentation a problem, especially if required several times?

Click to expand...

As long as you aren't adding oxygen, it's fine. I've actually been pondering the possibility of a massive stir bar in primary. Sure, a lot of junk would fail to settle out, but the primary would be over faster and you could get to secondary sooner. It wouldn't really save any time due to the extra need for secondary, but an accelerated primary is a good way to reduce the risk of infection. I don't really think this is practical, but it was worth thinking about.


Anyway, the primary is a nearly closed system. Nothing is getting in, only aroma and CO2 are getting out. I don't see how you could really do much harm with swirling.

Isnt there a pretty significant risk of getting some off flavors when swirling? Not from oxygen or anything like that, but I read somewhere (I believe "How to Brew") that the gunk that collects on the side of the primary can cause some serious off flavors in the beer.

Actually while I was typing this, I went ahead and looked it up, from John Palmer's "How to Brew":

"...islands of green-brown gunk that collect and tend to adhere to the sides of the fermentor. The gunk is composed of extraneous wort protein, hop resins, and dead yeast. These compounds are very bitter and if stirred back into the wort, would result in harsh aftertastes. Fortunately these compounds are relatively insoluble and are typically removed by adhering to the sides of the fermentor as the krausen subsides. Harsh aftertastes are rarely, if ever, a problem."

So, I think it would probably be good practice to not swirl this stuff back into your beer unless it is absolutely necessary.