No krausen on Jamil's Mild during active fermentation

I did an all grain brew of the mild recipe from brewing classic styles yesterday and pitched wyeast 1968 london esb around 7pm last night. It was starting to bubble when i checked it this morning. Tonight I opened up the bucket to pull a top crop and there is vigorous bubbling and trub churning in the wort but the foam disperses almost immediately. I've done starters with no krausen but I've never seen a 5 gal batch do this. Is this normal for this recipe? will the finished beer have no head retention?

Everything went well during brewing. The mash was a little on the cool side as the small grist didn't maintain the temp as well as larger batches and it dropped from 67C to 65C plus I hit 90% efficiency (vs the 84% previous personal best). Could this be the cause of the strange ferment?

I don't think you have a problem, I often don't get a real krausen for a couple days. A few times I've been a little concerned that the beer wasn't taking off. I wake up the next day and I have an explosion of krausen all over the place.

It seems to happen like that with English yeasts, IIRC.

This isn't a "my beer isn't fermenting yet" problem. It is clearly fermenting vigorously - the wort looks like it is at full boil - the entire surface is bubbling but no head is forming. there are a few wispy bubbles on the surface but they rapidly dissipate. I've used this yeast several times before and have never seen this. If the wort has the capability to form a krausen it should be doing it now.

I am curious about this as well. I had two beers in a row (porter and stout) that I use S-04 with and no krausen during fermentation. Interestingly, neither one will get a head when I pour it. (I bottle). There is definitely carbonation, but no head - similar to pouring a coke - quick bubbles, they pop, and then nothing.

The beers were drinkable right? No head retention was something I was worried about although its not a big deal in a mild. I've been analysing my process and I have thought of a few possibilities. Maybe some of these are similar to your's and we can figure it out.
1. Not thoughoutly rinsing the pbw from the fermenter. This is unlikely in my case because I washed it rinsed and sanitized with Star San 2 weeks ago when I bottled the last batch. I may not have been as thorough rinsing as I wasn't immediately filling it but it was stored upside down for the last 2 weeks and bone dry. While the wort was chilling, I sprayed it off with water and then sanitized with Star San.
2. I was using a large activator pack of wyeast dumped directly into the wort vs the small propagator packs (now discontinued) that I used in the past. I've noticed that the starters I've done with smack packs never krausened but any starters I've done using harvested yeast of the same variety do. maybe there is something in the nutrient solution that isn't good for head retention? Unlikely but has anyone else noticed that?
3. No vorlauf/HSA/misc BIAB issues. Unlikely as the other BIAB batches I did using wy1968 had a relentless krausen that hardened into a crust and never fell (I had to bust through with the racking cane to get to the beer).
4. Cleaning the boil kettle with dish soap. I sprayed it down after the previous batch and then scrubed it up with a sponge and dish soap then rinsed it off. In the past I just sprayed it off but it was getting pretty bad. This is unlikely because like the fermenter was stored upside down and dry, then rinsed off before use.
5. Something with the grain bill. This is the first time i used fawcetts maris otter and pale chocolate. Maybe low protein content compared to the domestic? seems unlikely.

I'm kinda thinking the problem is hotside. When i aerated it foamed up pretty good but by the time I had carried the fermenter to the basement and pitched the yeast, it had completely dissipated. Usually I'm dumping yeast through inches of foam

Dish soap would be my guess. Do you notice something like an oil slick on the top of the beer ? 1968 shouldn't behave this way since it is a top cropping yeast after all...

Maybe it will just crust later.

jfr1111 said:

Dish soap would be my guess. Do you notice something like an oil slick on the top of the beer ? 1968 shouldn't behave this way since it is a top cropping yeast after all...

Maybe it will just crust later.

Click to expand...

soap was my first guess as well. is it possible theres a slight soap residue in the fermenter?

Brewenstein said:

I am curious about this as well. I had two beers in a row (porter and stout) that I use S-04 with and no krausen during fermentation. Interestingly, neither one will get a head when I pour it. (I bottle). There is definitely carbonation, but no head - similar to pouring a coke - quick bubbles, they pop, and then nothing.

Click to expand...

i had the same experience with a belgian wit; roiling fermentation with no krausen and no head on the beer either. never happened before or since.

The soap is a possibility but I figured it was unlikely. I definitely rinsed after using 2 weeks ago and then a quick rinse brew day (and add a starsan rinse to the fermenter after last brew and immediately prior to this brew). I don't know how thorough it would need to be- i wash the glassware with the same stuff and I don't have problems with head retention on previous brew's pints. I had a few drinks while brewing but not enough to completely miss an oil slick. Actually I had less than usual....maybe the brewing gods were not pleased? Next batch I'll definitely rinse much more thoroughly and try to eliminate all the potential issues....and I'll drink more.

The only other source of contamination I could think of was the spray bottle I used to fight boil overs. Its was one of the empty home depot ones. I filled it up at brew day 2 weeks ago and the water had sat in there since. I tasted it and it had a slight plastic taste but unless that is some serious head killing chemicals, i can't see enough getting in to do that much damage. I only had one near boil over and it didn't take too much to kill it.

I tasted a sample tonight and there wasn't anything noticeable but its still fermenting and hard to really tell. Brewenstien and eastoak: did your beers taste ok?

Soap is not an issue for me because I never use it on my fermenters. Still no idea what it was.

As for the beers, they are okay, but nothing special. I am beginning to think I just don't like S-04.

I had the same thing happen when I brewed the scottish 70 and 80 from the classic styles book the beers turned out ok but nothing i would brew again.

A bit of followup- I just cracked a bottle of the mild. Its only been in the bottle for a week but it tastes good and has decent head retention. I'm almost done the pint and there is still a bit of head left at the edges and stuck to the glass. I don't know what went wrong during fermentation but it didn't seem to affect the final beer.

More followup. The mild with the krausen-less ferment was great with good head retention and the 4 other batches I brewed with yeast I harvested all had normal krausens.

On Friday I brewed another 1.037 mild (I love the session beers) and pitched a 1469 West Yorkshire Activator pack without a starter. I pitched a little on the cold side (16.5C/62F) but this morning the temp has increased to 18C/64F and the gravity has dropped to 5points but.....same krausenless ferment!!!! the wort is vigorously rolling, 1000's of bubbles rising to the service but quickly dissipating.

Ever since the last mild, i've been really conscious of any of the suspected causes. This is a different recipe with completely different grain bill from different maltsters and it was as close as I have ever got to a flawless brewday (hurray for brewing solo and sober!). I know this beer will have good head retention because when i dumped it into the fermenter, it foamed up about an inch and it stuck around for a long time (12 hrs later, there were still bubbles remaining on the surface) The only common factor I can identify is the new wyeast activator pack. When I used to do starters with the small propagator packs, it never krausened. If I pitched them directly into a wort, it would start really slow (probably due to the underpitch) but would krausen. They no longer make the propagators so I've been using the large Activators pitched directly into a session strength beer and I haven't had a krausen on a fresh pitch. This leads me to thinking that the nutrient in the Activator pack is the krausen killer. With the smaller Propagator packs, it would kill krausens in a starter but was diluted by 5 gallons of wort and didn't affect it. Now the larger volume in the Activator is enough to affect a full batch.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Does this sound plausible? This isn't a "please tell me my beer will be okay" post - I'm confident that it will be. I'm just interested in why it does this...and annoyed because it make top cropping weird.

I havent experienced what you're describing except for the cider I just made. Not much krausen but very active fermentation. Bubbles rising and quickly popping. I know its not the activator pack vs propagator thing you described. I've had 5 or 6 different yeast strains with activators and all did exactly as one would expect the majority to do. Krausen and all. I doubt it's anything related to yeast activity or strain. Maybe barometric pressure is causing low surface tension in the bubbles and not letting them stack up to form the krausen? Lots of science stuff in that theory.

I'm getting this again on 1.039 English Pale fermenting with a fresh activator pack of 1882 Thames Valley 2. It had a weak krausen on day 2 but it disappeared and it is just bubbling away without any foam. I'm reviving this thread as I'm hoping someone who knows what is going on will see it and respond. I can't see anything in my process that could be causing this. My current thought is that the activator isn't a big enough pitch for the high flocc'ers pitched at the low end of their ferment temp ranges.

I've had this happen to me, twice, one with 1968 and another with 1272. Both batches turned out drinkable and probably would have been fine with some extended aging, but I ended up dumping them. My main problem was that they had a slow fermentation, without forming a krausen, and never flocculated properly resulting in a muddled flavor.

I think the problem is either underpitching, not aerating enough, and/or starting fermentation too cold. I talked to one of my local brewers about this and he mentioned that if a beer starts showing signs of not producing a krausen, they'll repitch. This is for open fermentation.

Thanks, bierhaus...btw, this is your blog reader Edward and the affected beer is the bitter based off your ESB recipe. I pitched at around 17.5 C and I'm fermenting in an bucket with a loose lid...so its pretty close to an open fermentation. My aeration method consisted of dumping the beer back and forth between kettle and fermenter a few times and vigorous stirring. That should be adequate for a low strength beer. I took a gravity sample last night and it was down to 1.014 (4 days after pitching) and its still bubbling quite a bit. I'm hoping it will get down in the 1.010 range. If this wasn't the first pitch of wy1882 that I was planning to propagate into at least the next 3 batches, I would have added some wy1469 I harvested from my last batch (I have a full pint of clean top crop). That might be an interesting blend. In the future I will not pitch an activator into an entire 5 gal batch regardless of the gravity. I will either do a half batch or split batch with another yeast- starters don't really suit my lifestyle and I'd rather brew a low grav session beer as the starter.

...alright...I just got an email back from wyeast. Awesome customer service! Here is what they wrote back less than 12 hours later (only 3 business hours in there):

There are some pretty easy answers to your questions... which are great questions. The deal with extremely flocculent strains like the ones you are using is they form large flocks, larger than most other strains, during fermentation. Yeast cell flocks allow for trapping of CO2 bubbles and the subsequent rising of the flocks to the top of the fermenting wort. The inverse is true for completely non flocculent strains, they don't form flocks and therefor there is no "structure" to trap CO2 bubbles.

The balance of these flocks staying on top of the wort vs. sinking back down to the bottom is related to the flock sizes and amount of CO2 evolving from the wort. If the flocks are too big and the amount of CO2 bubbles is small, the flocks will not float and form a "krausen", they will fall back down to the bottom, or not float all the way to the top of the wort.

In your situation with these brews, you pitched 6 million cells/ml directly from the packs. This will give you a certain fermentation dynamic, which in your case did not allow for a high enough level of CO2 evolution to float the flocks of yeast on top of the wort. When you subsequently harvested yeast and repitced it, you likely hit pitch rates of 12 million cells per ml or higher. This led to a higher or faster rate of fermentation and a faster rate of CO2 bubble evolution... one high enough to keep the flocks afloat on top of the wort.

If it is necessary to top crop, then yes, you will need a higher pitch rate on that first brew to make this possible. If you can just harvest off of the bottom of the fermenter, then you don't need to worry about upping the pitch rate on the first fermentation.

I had this same problem thanks or posting the wyeast follow up.