Krausening?

Okay, how do I krausen a beer? My LIMITED understand would work something like this:

Cool and store about 1/6 of the wort without yeast in it. Also, store some yeast in a separate container. Add both when racking to secondary? Am I way off here? Do I cool and store 1/6 of the wort with yeast in it?

All you need to do is add wort to the bottles as you're bottling. More yeast isn't neccissary since it's already in the bottles and you're trying to keep THAT yeast active...not add more.

But...why would you want to do this? This method isn't really common practice anymore.

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

But...why would you want to do this? This method isn't really common practice anymore.

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Same reason some people still decoction mash I would guess.

MacGruber said:

Okay, how do I krausen a beer? My LIMITED understand would work something like this:

Cool and store about 1/6 of the wort without yeast in it. Also, store some yeast in a separate container. Add both when racking to secondary? Am I way off here? Do I cool and store 1/6 of the wort with yeast in it?

Click to expand...

There is a formula somewhere that calculates the amount of wort you need based on total volume of wort and gravity. It's in Papazian's book if you have that. You could probably find it by doing a search on here or on Google.

However, you do save the wort before you add the yeast. DO NOT put wort with yeast in it into a sealed container. It could explode. The purpose of krausening is to use your wort as yeast food for priming. All you need from the wort to carb your beer is the sugar it contains. Just mix it back into your beer before bottling like you would do with corn sugar.

Krausening is actually the process of adding freshly fermenting beer to the beer about to be bottled. Check out this link.

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

More yeast isn't neccissary since it's already in the bottles and you're trying to keep THAT yeast active...not add more.

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That would be priming, not kraeusening. Adding fresh yeast means, as Kaiser points out, you can harvest yeast from your bottles without worrying that you're selecting for non-flocculent cells.

I'm just trying to learn as much as I can. I really don't think I'll do this anytime soon. I'm also trying to learn more about decoction mashing. I know that neither of these are commonplace, but they're frequently used by Sam Adams and Victory brewing for some of my favorite beers.