rousing yeast, swirling techniques?

Y'all keep talking about rousing the yeast or swirling them to achieve better attenuation.

What is your technique for this? Are you talking about taking a sanitized spoon and scooping the trub off the bottom and mixing it back into the wort?

Or is it more like twisting the bucket by the handle to get some motion going.

I recently tried to rouse my yeast in a Smoked Porter with English Ale Yeast White Labs 002 and it was extremely gooey and I'm certain then whatever I stirred up quickly fell back to the bottom. I didn't want to oxidize the beer so my stirring efforts were limited to two or three strokes along the bottom and raising the trub up into the wort and just letting it slide off the spoon.

Please elaborate on your yeast rousing techniques.

Are you sure people aren't talking about doing this with a yeast starter?

I've never heard about this before - sounds like you would risk contaminating your brew more then anything else

and remember that your attenuation can be to high

Some people will recommend you rouse the yeast up in the case of very slow or suspected stuck fermentation. If that's what you mean, I just shake my carboy or bucket up a bit. Much safer than opening it up and sticking stuff in there. I just sort of grab it by the top and swirl the contents a bit.

I was taking a third SG reading and wasn't where I though / wanted the FG to be ( off by .001 1.019 vs. 1.018. So, after sanitizing I used the thief to swirl the yeast on the bottom. It wasn't until after I racked the beer that I realized how thick and matted the trub was.

So, the bucket was already open and I just used the thief to stir it up a bit.

LL when you talk about shaking the fermenter, and you saying to shake it enough to splash around a bit??? I realize that there shouldn't be any "air" in the bucket, that I should be filled with CO2, so there shouldn't be much/any risk of oxidation?

Not much risk, as long as the lid/stopper is still in place. Honestly, it's usually much better to just leave it alone and let the yeast do their thing, but sometimes they're just taking too long.

I don't really shake, more like a gentle swirling for about 20 seconds. I guess shake wasn't really the right word.

woolly, if your FG was off by .001 then you were where you wanted. You have to consider some minor sources of error in the whole process and that seems pretty minor to me. Relax a bit.

michelson39 said:

woolly, if your FG was off by .001 then you were where you wanted. You have to consider some minor sources of error in the whole process and that seems pretty minor to me. Relax a bit.

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+1 to this. When people are rousing the yeast it's because they are farther off than 1 point. RDWHAHB.

I think Revvy swirls his because he ferments at the lowest end of the ale yeast comfort zone, and the yeast is sluggish.

I split a starter between 2 carboys in a temp controlled fridge, one kicked off quick and had 80% attenuation in 14 days, the other seemed to stall at 1.034. I shook it up and raised the temp to 72 degrees, it's now krausening again.
It's droped 10 points in 2 days, I think it will finish now. Go figure??

Eastside

I don't open my pails for at least a month. Before I started using oxygen, I had a problem with a stuck ferment that I had given a week at room temp then put out in the garage. When I went to keg it, after a month, I found that it was at 1.030, so I grabbed the pail, and gently but firmly moved the pail in an orbit to get the liquid to swirl inside the pail. I then put it back to room temp, and after another week, I checked FG and kegged it. This was notty yeast at about the time of the theorized difference in the yeast after a new packaging system was instituted. I have no clue what the actual cause of the is problem was.

I use pure O2 now, but I still think it causes no harm to swirl when you think it should be about done, and see what that does to blow off or air lock activity, later on. Keep in mind that moving the liquid at all will cause some CO2 to come out of the fermenter, but I'm talking about watching for activity after a few hours.

When it has a been week, and I see no activity after a gentle rousing, I cold crash it for another 3 weeks. THEN I check for FG.