Healthy looking krausen?

So I've been doing some research on infection in beers...my airlock blew off last night due to adding muscat grape juice concentrate as per my recipe and I'm kind of worried about it. It really doesn't look any different than when it started but this is after 4 days of fermenting:


So does it look alright and is there any other way to tell if its infected?

All looks well to me, I'll allow it! RDWHAHB bro.

It's difficult to tell you what krausen looks like because different strains do different things, and they may also behave differently for a given recipe.

If you want to know what an infection really looks like, search for "pellicle" for what one kind of infection looks like.

My guess is that what we are looking at is just foamy krausen. Looks a bit like my kolsch did, i think.

Searched pellicle...produced my own pellicle...nah but that was pretty gross. Alright, thanks guys, I thought it looked alright and I'm just trying to get my first batch not messed up.

What did the grape juice concentrate come from? I haven't dabbled with grapes yet, besides what are off my vine. As long as you used proper sanitary practices and such you should be safe.

eeeWWWW!!!! I was just reading and googled pellicle. I hope mine dosnt turn out like that lol

The grape concentrate was supplied by a wine making website in a sealed can so I think it should be fine. I also cleaned and sanitized the measuring cup I used to add it to my carboy.

This looks perfectly normal.

looks happy. The nice thing about a blown off lid is that it's caused by foamy-CO2 filled stuff coming off the beer. the CO2 and general direction of movement will add a nice layer of protection to the fermenter. The more dangerous time to get an infection is when the yeast is less active. The friendly yeast is pretty good at winning the fight when it's active.

TimpanogosSlim said:

It's difficult to tell you what krausen looks like because different strains do different things, and they may also behave differently for a given recipe.

Click to expand...

Exactly, there's no such thing as a "healthy" or "Unhealthy" looking krausen. All krausens look different, even with the same yeast strain.

Like tim said, infections look like skins on the surface of the beer.

People have blow offs all the time, the thing to realize is that if it's blowing off, the co2 is pushing out of the hole....it's going to be very difficult for anything to get in there.

Looks fine. What's it smell like? If you have any kind of infection problem it will likely smell unhealthy too.

Well its not day 6 of my fermentation and my krausen started to bubble out of my airlock again. It did this on day 3 and then seemed to stop expanding but it was still fermenting, but now the krausen has started expanding again. Is fermentation normally this random or could something else be happening?

I'm just asking because the recipe I'm using(https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f78/dog-fish-head-midas-touch-71861/) says that the first 3 days should have the most activity and then implies that it calms down from there.

The beer smells great by the way, I had to take the airlock off to clean it and I smelled it while it was off.

Yeasties do what yeasties want. Typically, the majority or fermentation is done in the first 3 days or so, but yeasts are living organisims ("over a metal endoskeleton", haha, couldnt resist) and do what they will. Krausen like that is perfectly normal, and I always put a blowoff tube on my primaries, and i'd highly suggest you do it as well with this one, so you dont end up cleaning beer off your ceiling. This is what I currently have going. BTW, that's 5 gallons of beer in a 7 gallon carboy (and this wasnt even the height of the krausen)

Wow that's definitely kicking. Alright, I was just wondering about it and thanks for the quick response. I'll do a blow off tube I guess from now on...and mine didn't quite make it to the ceiling but it made it about 7 feet up the wall

If your krausen is still up to the airlock, and you're putting a blow off tube on there, make sure to SLOWLY release the airlock/pressure from the carboy. You cant see it in the picture, but there's still remnants of when I didn't do that on the wall behind my carboy :cross: