How does the beer style affects fermentation?

I am trying to find a correlation between beer style (from the most pale to the most dark) and the activeness of fermentation. In other words, which beer ferments more actively? I know that it is always different, but still - based on experience, is it possible to say, for example, that some beers have typical ways of fermentation? What makes one beer bubble like crazy for three full days, and the other for only one day?

 

You can't quantify it, at all. The amount of krausen doesn't really relate to either the gravity of the beer OR the fermentation temp. In fact there's really nothing quantifiable about why some beers krausen a lot, a little or have blowoffs. There's too many variables, such as yeast strain or the protein content of the wort, mineral content of the water, room temp, yadda yadda yadda.

In fact the biggest blowoff I ever had was from a low grav ordinary bitter. Fermented relatively cool.

If you're worried then get some fermcap foam control drops and add to the fermenter. That will prevent a blowoff. Or you can just use a blowoff tube, just in case.

 

Revy said it all! PROST.

 

It's hard to buy it. After all, beer is not a harry-potter-style potion - fermentation is just some chemistry And I can significantly reduce its variables. Let me rephrase my question. What if I brew three extract beers (5 gallons each) - both with the same bottled water, the same hops and the same dry yeast, the only difference being that for one batch I take 8 lbs of extra pale LME, for the other one I take 8 lbs of amber LME, and for the third I take 8 lbs of dark LME. Needless to say that I'll boil, cool, and pitch in exactly the same way, and then keep at the same temperature. Will there be a consistent difference in fermentation activity?

 

Buy it or don't, you're choice. It's not JUST chemistry...The minute you add a living micro-organism the game becomes totally different.

There is nothing "typical" in brewing...every fermentation is different, and should not be used to compare one with another...you can't do that.

No two fermentations are ever exactly the same.

When we are dealing with living creatures, there is a wild card factor in play..Just like with other animals, including humans...No two behave the same.

You can split a batch in half put them in 2 identical carboys, and pitch equal amounts of yeast from the same starter...and have them act completely differently...for some reason on a subatomic level...think about it...yeasties are small...1 degree difference in temp to us, could be a 50 degree difference to them...one fermenter can be a couple degrees warmer because it's closer to a vent all the way across the room and the yeasties take off...

Someone, Grinder I think posted a pic once of 2 carboys touching each other, and one one of the carboys the krausen had formed only on the side that touched the other carboy...probably reacting to the heat of the first fermentation....but it was like symbiotic or something...


Yeasts are like teenagers, swmbos, and humans in general, they have their own individual way of doing things.

When you brew enough, you'll understand.

Here's some examples of that from right here-

We see threads like this every day.

There are too many permutaions/combinations to chart to begin with and then the minute you pitch yeast you throw all pre-conceived notions of how it should be out the window.