Lager yeast and krausening questions

EinGutesBier · Mar 24, 2008

Sorry for the redundancy (I mentioned this in another thread) but I had a couple quick questions about general techiques, etc. First, I had finished brewing my steam beer at about 11:30 on Saturday, with the yeast pitched and everything. I checked it again on Sunday evening at about 7 and there was no activity. As a result, I bumped up the temperature a few degrees from the 64 degree range to about 68-70 to jumpstart the yeast.

The good news is that it worked and it's bubbling away now and maintaining a good temperature without my intervention. What I wonder is if this beer may have spoiled during that 20 hour window while the yeast was dormant-ish. This is my first time using lager yeast, much less in a steambeer, so I'm just curious if all is well. My suspicion is that there's nothing to worry about. By the way, does lager yeast tend to make a stronger odor during fermentation than an ale yeast? I recall having read that somewhere on this forum and I think that's the situation with this beer, too.

Second, I was wondering about using the last of my runoff, about a gallon, for krausening. This is just the straight wort, no hops, no nothing...but I figured I'd keep it on hand for yeast starters, but if I can use it to prime my beer, why the heck not? I've never krausened before so I'm hoping to hear from someone who might know.

AdIn · Mar 24, 2008

To answer you first question - there is nothing to worry about. This time period from the moment you pitched yeast and till you see first signs of krausen is called lag time. During this time yeast is going through reproduction phase. For lagers lag phase <24 hours is considered acceptable. Some people here on the board experienced longer lag phase w/o any detrimental results on their beer. Since you had you pitching temperature higher then fermentation you would probably need to do diacetyl rest in the end of your fermentation. Just search for it and there will be plenty information about it.

Regarding the krausening. Absolutely, you can use it. You just need to boil it down to the OG gravity of your beer to avoid making impact on FG.

EinGutesBier · Mar 26, 2008

AdIn said:
To answer you first question - there is nothing to worry about. This time period from the moment you pitched yeast and till you see first signs of krausen is called lag time. During this time yeast is going through reproduction phase. For lagers lag phase <24 hours is considered acceptable. Some people here on the board experienced longer lag phase w/o any detrimental results on their beer. Since you had you pitching temperature higher then fermentation you would probably need to do diacetyl rest in the end of your fermentation. Just search for it and there will be plenty information about it.

Regarding the krausening. Absolutely, you can use it. You just need to boil it down to the OG gravity of your beer to avoid making impact on FG.

I've decided I definitely want to krausen this batch. But I do have a couple questions on the whole process.

1.) Does krausening come before or after the diacetyl rest? Will krausening interfere with the diacetyl rest?

2.) Is it okay to treat the krausening process as priming the beer for bottling, then let the beer condition in the bottles? Or is it necessary to krausen in the fermenter and bottle afterward?

3.) Finally, does krausening effectively take the place of priming the bottles? How do you calculate the amount of wort needed to krausen by gravity and batch size? When do I know the krausening process is complete?

Bonus: Does anyone know, roughly by style, how long steam beers are supposed to typically ferment, with or without krausening?

AdIn · Mar 26, 2008

Let me refer you to couple posts written by Kaiser. I think those will answer most of your questions:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Fermenting_Lagers
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=9685

EinGutesBier · Mar 26, 2008

AdIn said:
Let me refer you to couple posts written by Kaiser. I think those will answer most of your questions:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Fermenting_Lagers
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=9685

Thanks for the great resources, AdIn! If you or anyone else could answer a couple questions that popped into my mind, that'd be great.

First, would I want to use some of the lager yeast in the bottom of my fermenter to make the krausen starter? They shouldn't be tired out since the fermentation should only take about a week or maybe even 5 days. Or, should I culture one of my yeast ales from a bottle I have sitting around? One good candidate comes to mind...

Second, will the krausen starter, in addition to carbonating the beer, reduce any remaining diacetyl?

Thanks! Hopefully this thread will be useful to others who are thinking about doing the California Common!

EinGutesBier · Mar 26, 2008

Any input at all would be greatly appreciated...I'm about due to use this technique pretty soon.

AdIn · Mar 26, 2008

EinGutesBier said:
First, would I want to use some of the lager yeast in the bottom of my fermenter to make the krausen starter? They shouldn't be tired out since the fermentation should only take about a week or maybe even 5 days. Or, should I culture one of my yeast ales from a bottle I have sitting around? One good candidate comes to mind...

Sure, you can definitely reuse some of your yeast after primary fermentation. But not the secondary. Search for "yeast washing" to see how properly handle yeast in this case. But you can also use different yeast. In fact it's better to use true lager yeast for krausening (so it keeps cleaning your beer at lower temperatures) or yeast with higher flocculation.

EinGutesBier said:
Second, will the krausen starter, in addition to carbonating the beer, reduce any remaining diacetyl?

Sure, the idea is that you add fresh and more active yeast which will clean diacetyl faster. But you need to make your krausen at the proper temperature.

In fact I just realized that you are using Commons Lager yeast. I never dealt with it, you may not even need to worry about diacetyl.

EinGutesBier · Mar 27, 2008

AdIn, you, sir, are the man. If this brew works out, I owe you some of the credit.

AdIn · Mar 27, 2008

Glad I could help, truly most of my knowledge is from this board.

WBC · Mar 28, 2008

You should age a lager before you Krausen it.

Look here to Krausen beer: http://www.picobrewery.com/askarchive/krausen.htm

WBC

EinGutesBier · Mar 30, 2008

WBC said:
You should age a lager before you Krausen it.

Look here to Krausen beer: http://www.picobrewery.com/askarchive/krausen.htm

WBC

Thanks for the info, WBC. Normally I'd agree with you but since this is a steam beer, the idea is to do a primary fermentation from 5-7 days, then krausen, allowing a conditioning phase. Apparently, the beer will be carbonated in another 5-7 days, though I can't say whether it'll be ready to drink then. I decided to krausen with a 3/4 flocculant ale yeast and 1/4 with some of my lager used from the fermenter. I'll be sure to update to share how this works out. Hopefully no bottle bombs here!

Lager yeast and krausening questions

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