What's the fastest you've developed Krauzen?

Today I brewed an all grain 2.5 gallon batch of Poor Richard's Ale using US04 yeast. I pitched it at 6:30 pm...I just got home from watching an IHL hockey game and post game drinking at the sports bar...I got home at midnight and peeked my head in the brew closet...



A nice 1/4" krauzen greeted me.

That's the fastest I've ever seen....I've guessing since it's a 2.5 gallon batch and I pitched a whole packet of US-04, that the high pitchrate kicked it into vroom vroom mode...Or maybe it was the shaking job I did to aerate it....I just got one of those nifty 3 gallon Better Bottles and rather than set up my O2 and airstone I just shook the puppy up...

Anyway, I was just wondering if you guys ever noticed really rapid Krauzen development....5.5 hours is the fastest I've ever seen..and that's just my discovery of it...I wonder when it actually formed...

It was also the first brew I got to grind my own grain..With the corona that Yooper gave me!!! Sweet....

Oh, a lesson for you lurking n00bs....see the krauzen? It is accompanied by absolutely NO AIRLOCK ACTIVITY!!!! But obviously there is fermentation happening...The nice thing about a carboy is you can see what's going on, but again it proves that airlock activity or lack thereof is NO INDICATION of fermentation...

Gotta love the dry stuff.

The orange cap leaks on a 3 gal BB. Try the Red one if you want airlock activity. It is a little tight but it is also air tight. Some people use a wire tie on the orange cap and that seems to work for them.

The Red Cap trick was from Forrest over at Austin Homebrew. Thats the one they sell for a better bottle.

I did an American Brown ale a few months ago. Pitched active slurry into it upstairs and proceeded to clean up. By the time I took it downstairs 30 minutes later I had airlock activity. 4 hours later I had a decent layer of krausen.

I had a nice krausen on my last brew after about 3 hours and airlock activity within the first hour. Dry yeast is some awesome stuff!

primaried one batch, and dumped another on top of the cake after like 9-10 days... basically had instant action.

2 hours, but I pitched on a yeast cake from a previous brew.

sirsloop said:

primaried one batch, and dumped another on top of the cake after like 9-10 days... basically had instant action.

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I get this with apfelwein.

I dump in the sugar and it starts fermenting on the cake before I even add the juice sometimes

I finished brewing last night at 6 and pitched some harvested notty that I had proofing for about 3 hours. The foam from aeration never subsided. It went straight from aeration foam to krausen and a bubbling airlock by midnight and this morning it more or less a steady stream of air into the blowoff container.

I pitched onto a yeast cake, took about 20 minutes before I had krausen. I wasn't even done cleaning up yet!