A watched pot...

[jsweet]

Kinda cool thing happened yesterday. Came home from work and I went to check on a saison I had brewed the previous night -- so it had been about 18 hours or so since I pitched. There were a couple of spots of foam starting to form, but nothing I would call a kraeusen yet. Went and chatted with my wife for about 40 minutes or so, then decided to take another peek at the beer (sorry, I am a fermentation voyeur, I can't help it!) and there was a beautiful white kraeusen about 1/4" thick over the whole top.

Just wanted to share that story. It was neat how rapidly it went from just having the barest preliminary signs of fermentation, to extremely active attenuation. But like I say, I'm a yeast voyeur, so maybe I just found that more interesting than I ought.

(Edit: To be clear, I ferment in glass carboys, so I don't need to mess with the beer to peek at it. If I fermented in buckets, I would restrain myself )

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

I love that! I got to see my first krausen actually form from nothing in the last batch we brewed. We'd brewed that morning, and while enjoying some beers late that evening, li'l areas of swirling bubbles formed. Not a half hour later, an inch or so of dense, cream colored foam on top. Real neat to observe!

 

[MBasile]

What yeast strain did you use? I had a similar experience. Checked in the morning after an early evening pitch and there was about 1/4" of krausen. Checked 1-2 hours later and it had blown the blow-off tube off!

 

[jsweet]

It was Wyeast 3711, which is supposedly a real beast. I did not bother to make a starter because it was only a 3 gallon batch of fairly average gravity, so I figure 100 billion cells should be plenty.

Most of my fermentations take off in less than 24 hours (I generally use US-05 for most stuff) but I didn't realize the kraeusen formed so rapidly once it got going!

 

[unionrdr]

The only time I get that is when I make a small starter for the 7g cooper's ale yeast sachet. Pitch the starter in the evening,get up at 6 or 7am to see krausen pushing at the lid. Last time,when my Sunset Gold APA was getting started,the airlock was bubbling merrily at 6am.
Then we went out to run errands around mid morning. By late lunch time,we walked back in to see a re-make of "The Blob"! Talk about slow mo. I had to break out the Dremel,an old "s" type airlock,& a length of 3/8" tubing. I knew there was a good reason to save those 1/2G vodka jugs.
Filled 1/3 with water,they work great & are just the right size for a blow off vessel.

 

[RIT_Warrior]

I pitched a 2 liter starter into a Tripel that I had forgotten to add 3 pounds of sugar into. I knew I forgot to pitch the sugar but it was too late. When I woke up in the morning about 8 hours after I had pitched I saw the most violent fermentation I've ever seen, IRL or online. My "orange cap" thing for the carboy was about to give way, so I quickly sanitized a blow off tube and attached it.

It got even more fun when I added the sugar last night. The yeast went absolutely ape **** when I poured it in. I'm at work now, but I'm worried my blow-off bottle has been overwhelmed and I'm going to have beer all over my floor when I get back.