Another krausen question

So I was reading on here the other day about someone likes to swirl his beer to get the yeast up off the bottom. So last night I tried that just a little bit, swirled it just a little and then the krausen started to drop out. It looked like white streaks down the sides of the carboy. Is that a bad thing to do? Will that throw in some off flavors from the krausen? Not super worried about it, but just wondering.

Possibly....

I'm one of those who adhere's to the "Yeast have been doing this for over 4,000 years so leave your fermenter the hell alone." School of brewing...I don't swirl, I don't knock the krausen down, I don't even look at my fermenter for a month. I let everything happen naturally.

It's true that the krausen DOES indeed contain all manner of stuff that could cause off flavors...and it is also true that if it fall anturally, it will pull all the other yuckies out of supension and take it down to the bottom, leaving your beer clean. Kinda like a falling filter.

I am not entirely unconvinced that if you swirl your beer and MIX your krausen into your beer, and disrupt the natural dropping/pulling action of the krusen, that you will actually end up mixing IN the nasty flavors as opposed to letting them FALL THROUGH.

All I know is that I don't get any nasty flavors in my beer.....

Ya thats what I thought, not to worried about it. Good to know though, thanx for the info.

Only thing is I would have to move the carboy to rack it from primary and it will swish around a little bit either way.

Stunna980 said:

Only thing is I would have to move the carboy to rack it from primary and it will swish around a little bit either way.

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If there's still a krauzen up, you shouldn't be racking the beer to secondary anyway. The secondary is to clear the beer. And you do that AFTER fermentation is complete.

If there is still a krauzen, it is still doing it's thing.

That's why many of us leave our beers in primary for a month, OR wait 14 days before racking...that way we give our yeast plenty of time to do their thing....there is abosolutely no harm in waiting..even palmer says so...in fact your beer will thank you for it....

We forget this simple fact...We are not making koolaid, or chocolate quick, just stirring in and having instant gratification...when you pitch yeast, you are dealing with living micro-organisms...and they have their own timetable, and their own agenda

In Mr Wizard's colum in BYO this month he made an interesting analogy about brewing and baking....He said that egg timers are all well and good in the baking process but they only provide a "rule of thumb" as to when something is ready...recipes, oven types, heck even atmospheric conditions, STILL have more bearing on when a cake is ready than the time it says it will be done in the cook book. You STILL have to stick a toothpick in the center and pull it out to see if truly the cake is ready.....otherwise you may end up with a raw cake....

Not too different from our beers....We can have a rough idea when our beer is ready (or use something silly like the 1-2-3 rule (which doesn't factor in things like yeast lag time or even ambient temp during fermentation) and do things to our beer willy nilly....but unless we actually stick "our toothpick" (the hydrometer) in and let it tell us when the yeasties are finished...we too can "f" our beer up.

Yes sir there is still krausen up there. Its def not done yet its still popping on the air lock, so I won't rack it till its all done. When I do it will still swirl a little bit though from moving the carboy. Revvy good info man, I appreciate that!

I swirl my carboys

I ferment for 4 weeks. After the initial fermentation has passed (usually 7-10 days) and the beer starts to settle, I will swirl about once a day up until 5 days before bottling.

I began using this practice when I had a stuck fermentation with a Belgian Trippel. If I remember correctly, the F.G. should have been 1.014 and I was still above 1.020. Based upon the advice given to me by the guru at my LHBS, I began swirling the carboy to bring the yeast back into suspension. This worked.

The idea was reinforced to myself when I began making starters and swirling the beaker to mix the yeast up and introduce oxygen. The difference between the starter and the beer is that we don’t want to introduce any oxygen. This should be taken care of though as there shouldn’t be any oxygen in the carboy with a secure air lock and the cushion of CO2 from fermentation.

If you think of it this way: During initial fermentation there is turbulent fluid flow which allows the yeast to move all around the beer, from areas of low sugar concentration to areas of higher concentration. After initial fermentation, the beer becomes more stagnant and the yeast no longer has an efficient transfer vehicle. The swirling stands to mimic the transfer of the yeast. I also feel this action may help the yeast “clean up” after themselves.

What Revvy says about the krausen acting as a filter as it drops to the bottom of the fermenter makes a lot of sense. If the krausen can be kept at the bottom and out of the bottling bucket, it will prevent off flavors. I try to avoid the krausen with another method; by getting rid of it. I reference this from Charlie Papazian’s “The Joy of Homebrewing”. I ferment in a 5 gallon carboy with a blow off tube. During initial fermentation I can usually expect about a ½ gallon of blow off to leave the carboy. With a majority of the krausen out of the way, I feel confident that I am not introducing any off flavors. I do realize the krausen is beer but with the exception of one of my beers (Bavarian Weizen) where I only yielded 44 12oz beers, most of my batches have produced between 47-49 12oz beers. I am willing sacrifice a few beers to make the final product better.

With this in mind let me say that I am fairly new to this so please don’t interpret my post as me standing on my soap box yelling “MY way is the ONLY right way”. This has worked for me and I have made beers that I am very proud of using this method. It is nothing more then my part of the never ending experimentation to make great beer that all of us on this board call “Homebrewing”

Jenks829 said:

I swirl my carboys

I ferment for 4 weeks. After the initial fermentation has passed (usually 7-10 days) and the beer starts to settle, I will swirl about once a day up until 5 days before bottling.

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If you swirl that much and fermentation has been completed, you could be causing your beer to oxydize, as well as mix the nasty stuff back into your beer...seriously.

It's one thing to recommend swirling the fermenter gently once, to resuspend the yeast if you suspect fermentation has stalled. But if everything has been going fine, AND you've been opening the fermenter up to take readings or sniff the airlock, then you are getting air inside the fermenter, and if you are swirling the co2 blanket may be disturbed enough to let the air in contact with the beer.

The purpose of shaking a starter is to get oxygen in PRE FERMENTAION, like you oxygenate you beer before yeast pitching....BUT NOT once the beer has neared the end of fermentation....The it is actually bad for you beer.

If you are doing it for four weeks, more than likely you are causing harm to your beer...

Just because something works for one part of the brewing cycle, doesn't mean it translates for another aspect....

That's like the guy who posted on here after reading about olive oil aeration and thinking "wow if one drop works, maybe dumping the whole bottle in will work better."

Needless to say, that logic leap was NOT a good idea....first time I ever advised someone to dump his beer.

Additionally the "getting rid of Krausen" mentality is about 30 years old....it comes from a time when people believed in things like autolysis, and feared their yeast and it's by products....More than likely today if you asked Papazian, he would have a different response, and process.

Times have changed, this is an ever evolving hobby, the yeast is much better quality that it was in the 70's when it was important from europe in dry crappy cakes that might have spent months at sea....we have now found in the last couple years that the yeast process and it's by products are not harmful to our beers, and if left to their own devices and to their own natural agenda the yeasties take care of everything....and improve our beer.

Hey Revvy how long have you been brewing, your pretty damn knowledgable.

Stunna980 said:

Hey Revvy how long have you been brewing, your pretty damn knowledgable.

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Revvy? He doesn't brew. He just comes on here and makes stuff up off the top of his head to look smart.

Seriously, trust in Revvy. He knows a lot and is willing to dispense his knowledge and experience in vast quantities.

Heck ya and that is much appreciated!

ChshreCat said:

Revvy? He doesn't brew. He just comes on here and makes stuff up off the top of his head to look smart.

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And I wanna see him put that in his sig.

Revvy said:

If you swirl that much and fermentation has been completed, you could be causing your beer to oxydize, as well as mix the nasty stuff back into your beer...seriously.

It's one thing to recommend swirling the fermenter gently once, to resuspend the yeast if you suspect fermentation has stalled. But if everything has been going fine, AND you've been opening the fermenter up to take readings or sniff the airlock, then you are getting air inside the fermenter, and if you are swirling the co2 blanket may be disturbed enough to let the air in contact with the beer.

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I don't take a sample until bottling day. If it is good, I bottle. If not, I wait. I've only had to wait once so far. I feel this is mostly due to the advice from this board to keep the beer in the primary for 3-4 weeks.

Could I then assume that since I am not opening to take samples and my air lock is good that there is little or no air/oxygen to oxidize the beer?

Revvy said:

The purpose of shaking a starter is to get oxygen in PRE FERMENTAION, like you oxygenate you beer before yeast pitching....BUT NOT once the beer has neared the end of fermentation....The it is actually bad for you beer.

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This I do understand. What I was trying to convey when I included this in my post was that it was from watching the yeast stuck on the bottom mix into the starter via swirling that gave me the thought process that this would/could be beneficial to getting the yeast around the beer; sans the oxygen

Revvy said:

Just because something works for one part of the brewing cycle, doesn't mean it translates for another aspect....

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Great advice that resonates beyond homebrewing and into the many aspects of life.

Revvy said:

Additionally the "getting rid of Krausen" mentality is about 30 years old....it comes from a time when people believed in things like autolysis, and feared their yeast and it's by products....More than likely today if you asked Papazian, he would have a different response, and process.

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This is an unavoidable characteristic of R&D in any field. Once the Earth was the center of the universe....

I would only swirl the fermenter if I had a stalled or stuck fermentation. I had a bad experience with the dubbel I bottled a week ago. I think it was poor aerataion, but it got stuck around 1.022 for about 7 days, and I swirled the fermenter everyday after having first found out. I eventually had to add some yeast energizer, and I took my sanitized spoon and stirred the entire cake off the bottom (very gently, of course, I did not want to oxygenate - there was not even a bubble from turbulence).

Needless to say after fermentation restarted I left it in the primary for another 3 weeks to make sure it finished, and cleaned and cleared up. That brew spent a total of 7 weeks and a day (50 days) in the primary.

Again, I would only swirl or stir if a similar situation would arise. Having said that, proper aeration, pitch rates and temps are more than likely going to give you a strong fermentation and decrease the chances of becoming stalled or stuck.

Preach on Revvy!