Does US-05 give anyone else a weird krausen?

olotti said:

Those look like co2 bubbles and not krausen but that's just my guess. My experience with 05 is that it gets a normal foamy krausen then just all drops until basically there is nothing left on top of the beer. Maybe do a gentle swirl not slosh and see if some of those bubbles don't get re absorbed or get your airlock to burp a little. But 15 days is a long time to have any top activity.

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This is my second time using US05 where it forms a normal looking but small krausen. About 1 day into the krausen I see a small amount of yeast start to grow on top. Over the next few days the yeast grows over the top of the krausen. Once it completely covers the krausen the CO2 gets trapped and forms giant yeast bubbles.

It's super weird and I'm curious why US05 behaves so funny. I pitched a Wyeast smack pack into 2.5 gallons of wort 10 days ago and it's behaving beautifully. Much better clarity than I'm used to seeing with rehydrated dry yeast.

The beer I brewed a few batches ago using washed Notty behaved really nicely too.

1977Brewer said:

I'm starting to think you may have an infection on your hands. 15 days at 66 - 68 and it should've finishedz

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I'm 95% sure it's just some wet yeast that decided to grow on top and didn't want to drop. I gave it a nice swirl this morning (posted pics a few posts back) and underneath those weird yeasty bubbles that trapped CO2 the beer looked perfectly normal.

I'm hoping that by sinking a good chunk of it the rest will sink on it's own.

I'll be bottling on Saturday which will put it at 21 days.

Decided to bottle since I'm going out of town for a few days. Gravity went from 1.069 to 1.011 - which works out to 83% attenuation after 18 days in primary. Last 2 days I let the temps ramp up to 71F.

Sample tasted good, no off flavors detected. Added enough priming sugar to hit 2.5 CO2 volume and harvested a pint of washed yeast from this batch.

aprichman said:

Decided to bottle since I'm going out of town for a few days. Gravity went from 1.069 to 1.011 - which works out to 83% attenuation after 18 days in primary. Last 2 days I let the temps ramp up to 71F.

Sample tasted good, no off flavors detected. Added enough priming sugar to hit 2.5 CO2 volume and harvested a pint of washed yeast from this batch.

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I'd like to offer a safety suggestion for future batches. Check gravity 3 days before bottling day, then again on bottling day. If it's stable, bottle. If not, wait a few more days and check again. This is more of a safety issue to avoid bottle bombs - not a quality issue. It should also be clear or slightly misty, but I think that's more of a quality issue.

ncbrewer said:

I'd like to offer a safety suggestion for future batches. Check gravity 3 days before bottling day, then again on bottling day. If it's stable, bottle. If not, wait a few more days and check again. This is more of a safety issue to avoid bottle bombs - not a quality issue. It should also be clear or slightly misty, but I think that's more of a quality issue.

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My personal thought is that if the yeast has reached expected attenuation and is visibly done fermenting the risk of infection from opening up the carboy and taking multiple samples is greater than the risk of creating a bottle bomb.

Ideally my next fermentation vessel would have a port to draw samples from.

I know I'm digging up an old thread here, but how did this beer turn out? I brewed a 10 gallon batch 4 weeks ago with S-05 and one bucket is perfectly clear while the other has bubbles exactly like your image from day 15. Gravity is where I expect, taste and aroma are fine; trying to determine if this one is going south.

phidelt844 said:

I know I'm digging up an old thread here, but how did this beer turn out? I brewed a 10 gallon batch 4 weeks ago with S-05 and one bucket is perfectly clear while the other has bubbles exactly like your image from day 15. Gravity is where I expect, taste and aroma are fine; trying to determine if this one is going south.

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The batch turned out pretty good and I think the yeast did a fine job. This particular batch turned out on the sweet side despite fermenting down from 1.069 to 1.011. I attributed the sweetness to a few factors such as the use of honey malt, overusing crystal malts in general, and priming my bottles with dextrose. No real off flavors outside of the weird sweetness.

I reused another jar of US05 that was washed at the same time as this one on another IPA with a retooled grain bill. The fermentation looked almost exactly the same. This beer came out really nice as well and didn't have the sweetness that the other beer exhibited.

Overall I've found US-05 to be fairly neutral yeast that leaves a soft feel that finishes with a muted peach ester. My only real complaint is that it doesn't flocculate well at room temperature. Since I don't have the capacity to cold crash my bottles ended up with a fair amount of yeast in them.

I've since switched to using Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II) as my primary house yeast which leaves a bit of sharper, brighter finish with mild stone fruit esters and flocculates extremely well. I also have been using a strain from a local brewery (Block 15) called Sticky Yeast that flocculates fairly well and throws off citrus/tropical notes.

I've found that these yeasts suit my palette better and add an enjoyable character to my beers that I prefer compared to US05.