5 days left in primary..

i hope..

My hefe has been in primary for 9 days and fermentation has slowed quite a bit. I was expecting the kreausen to totally dissapear and the yeast to start collecting at the bottom of the carboy but this hasn't happened yet.

high kreausen has passed but there is still a lot of it there on top.
it's really bready yeasty looking (duh)

I'm wondering if this sounds normal for a wheat beer?

Am I supposed to wait for it to dissapear before i bottle?

I don't want to bottle too soon but I would like to be able to bottle this weekend if at all possible.

I'll try and post a picture tonight.

TIA!
Will

If you're not going to rack to a secondary then definitely wait until the kraeusen drops and the bubbling stops. I would even go so far as to take SG readings several days apart to ensure that fermentation has stopped.

I don't know which yeast you used, but my experience with 3068 is that it can ferment quite vigorously for several weeks if it wants to.

Baron von BeeGee said:

If you're not going to rack to a secondary then definitely wait until the kraeusen drops and the bubbling stops. I would even go so far as to take SG readings several days apart to ensure that fermentation has stopped.

I don't know which yeast you used, but my experience with 3068 is that it can ferment quite vigorously for several weeks if it wants to.

Click to expand...

I used WLP300

for maybe two days it was rockin.. pretty much constant bubbling..

now it is about 4-5 a min i think.. i'll have to count after work.

one of my worries with it is that the kreausen doesn't look similar to a normal beer head. (which is kindof what i was expecting althought probably wrong..) but i'ts pretty gnarly and nasty looking.. how normal is that?

thanks..
ws

I haven't used that yeast, but some yeasts will throw some really kooky looking kraeusens. Nothing to worry about. Wyeast 1338 is probably about the weirdest I've seen.

Thanks!

time to relax......

probably still gonna take the photo..
ws

I've yet to make a wheat that the krausen doesn't seem to take forever to drop. American, hefe, wit. Common denominator seems to be wheat grain I guess. Think I hear this from others here as well.

thanks everyone..

just a small update..

I went and moved the carboy from the bottom of the bathtub to the top of a cooler that is sitting in the bathtub and that sort of encouraged some of the gunk on top to start settling.. not sure if that was good or bad.. but i'm not to worried about it.

I wanted the carboy to sit in the elevated position so i don't have to move it before i start the syphon and stir up any more junk that i have to.

anyway.. in the past day or two the kreausen seems to have dissapated pretty well and i can now see the top of the beer when looking down on it.

I'm getting pretty anxious to bottle and be able to test some of this out.

Maybe a gravity reading is in order for tomorrow

thanks again everyone
ws

wow, my hefe was finished fermenting by the 3rd day....

I used the Whitelabs Hefeweizen IV yeast. It turned out AWESOME (even though I am drinking it way too early).

ok.. so here is the update..

I forgot to take a gravity reading on thursday like i said i was going to.. so another today won't tell me anything. (right?)

anyway..
My airlock is putting out one bubble ever 30 seconds. Does that give me any good indication of whether or not bottling time is here? Seems a bit fast to me but this is my first beer.

I'll probably go ahead and take a gravity reading today.. but is the airlock a good judge as well?

thanks
ws