Krausen Level Question

OK, a couple of days ago I posted asking if I should rack to secondary even though I still had a fair amount of airlock activity in the primary after 10 days. Some people told me to wait for airlock action to slow to ~ 1 bpm, some people said they tend to not pay as much attention to airlock activity and rather wait for krausen to fall. Well, I've got a question here. At high krausen I had between 2 1/2 - 3" and now I have about a 1/4" krausen, maybe a little less. I wanted to know if that qualifies the krausen as fallen or is it fallen only when it completely dissapates? Now, a monkeywrench has been thrown into the situation here. Over the last couple of days it has been extremely warm here (Long Island), about 65*. This has made the ambient temp in my closet jump from about 63* to about 69* and has increased my airlock activity (was at about 5 bpm and jumped back up to 8 bpm). Now what I wanted to know was should I rack to secondary based on the krausen having fallen or should I wait for airlock activity to slow to about 1 bpm. My OG was 1.060 and I checked the SG a couple of days ago (at 7 days) and it was 1.020. Any input would be helpful, thanks a ton guys.

Joe

Check your SG, if it's steady then rack it, if not, then wait. I suspect it has a way to go yet, 1.020 seems high, but I'm VERY new to this, so take that into consideration as well.

I still say leave it. Wait until the 1 bpm. 1.020 seems a little high. I suspect it will get to about 1.015. Two weeks is not unreasonable. Just be patient .

If you are getting a lot of activity I'd say let it finish. It might only be co2 comming out of solution due to warmer ambient tempertures but it will decrease the gravity a bit. I wait until all activity has finished before racking to secondary.

RiversC174 said:

This has made the ambient temp in my closet jump from about 63* to about 69*

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FWIW, 63 is near the bottom of the temp range for most ale yeast strains. Probably not so low as to halt fermentation, but low enough that it's definitely going to be slower.

wait until all the krausen falls

airlock activity can fool you

sometimes when all the krausen has fallen and you have a thick cake on the bottom and you sitll have airlock activity - it's probably the yeast eating itself