Skimming the Kraeusen

Does anybody do this? I've seen it mentioned in some literature, I've also seen people say it doesn't make any difference. I'm pretty much in the latter camp.

However, I decided to do it with my Hefe V2.0, well, just to see what would happen. I also was planning to harvest some yeast that way following in the Kaiser's footsteps, but ultimately it just went down the sink. What was interesting was that I reached full kraeusen pretty quickly and skimmed it off. 8hrs later the same thing! I've now skimmed off 4 'full kraeusens'. It's possible I would have had blowoff with this batch, but I usually don't. Anybody else noticed this? The first kraeusen batch had a lot of nasty dark material in it, but the next three were nothing but foam and yeast.

Baron von BeeGee said:

Does anybody do this? I've seen it mentioned in some literature, I've also seen people say it doesn't make any difference. I'm pretty much in the latter camp.

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I did this for Hefe v1.0.

Usually, you would skim all the brown gunk first. This is trub that is floating to the top of the Kraeusen. After one or 2 days you would skim again to harvest yeast. After that I'd leave it alone. There is no need to skim again, unless you need even more yeast.

BTW, I had hadly any trub at the bottom of the primary after I racked to the secondary. Whirlpooling and skimming the 1st Krauesen (which wasn't that gunked-up either) must have taken care of this.

Kai

I gave my keggle its inaugural run this weekend, so no whirlpooling, just bazooka screening which seemed to work pretty well, plus I used whole hops so it was primarily the break to be screened. I'll see how much trub is left when I rack.

i have done this my last few beers, but i'll have to wait to see if it makes any difference in the long run as theyre still conditioning.

The only advantages I understand are getting some of the bitter resins out of the wort and harvesting healthy yeast. Anyways, time will tell.

this can't really be done with glass.... do you guys use buckets, or some sorta ss fermenters?

Yep, we're using buckets.

i notice most of the resinous scum gets plastered all over the sides and top of my carboys. it's prolly achieving a similar end result as skimming it off the top. however, i would like to get my hands on some of the yeast off the top of the cake, rather than repitching x amount of times, or trying to wash the yeast from the bottom after racking.