How does the beer style affects fermentation?

[bredstein]

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?

 

[Revvy]

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.

 

[starrfish]

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.

 

[bredstein]

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.

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?

 

[Revvy]

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-

I brewed 10 gallon batch of IPA and split it into two 5 gallon fermenters. One fermenter is clear and the other is cloudy. Other than being in separate fermenters both batches came from the same boil and were cooled and pitched the same way. Any idea what could cause this?

Thanks

One week ago today I brewed two different IPAs, both kits from Northern Brewer. Both had a starting gravity of about 1.065 and both had estimated final gravity of 1.017 according to Beersmith.

I used US05 on both and both sat next to each other in my garage and fermented in the mid 60's. One beer had bubbles rolling throught the airlock all week, I never saw a single bubble through the airlock of the other. I brought them inside today and checked FG and both are just below 1.020...about done.

Why would one have bubbled so vigorously and not the other? One kit was liquid extract and the other dry....would that have made a difference?

I followed a five-gallon recipe and split the wort into two separate 5-gallon buckets. (The recipe is the "Easiest Beer I Ever Made" stuff in another long thread on this board.)

Everything went well during brewing, everything was sterile. I basically have the exact same thing split into two 2.5-gallon quantities.

It's been 48 hours. Now one bucket has been fermenting like crazy and the other is not doing much at all. The first one started bubbling about 6 hours after I sealed the bucket and it's been going nuts ever since. The second bucket isn't moving.

These buckets are identical except for the yeast. I pre-started the yeast, and it clumped up. I immediately realized I shouldn't have done that because it would be hard to split evenly. I split it as best I could between the two buckets but I wished I'd bought two packets of yeast - one for each bucket.

The only thing I can think is that I didn't split the yeast evenly, and I got way more of it in the first bucket than I did in the second.

I'm wondering how long I should wait before I just dump the non-functioning bucket and use it for something else? I know fermentation is hard to predict BUT these are two identical buckets so there can't be that much variability, can there?

Also, is one packet of yeast too much for 2.5 gallons of brew? If I do this in the future, should I put one packet in each bucket, or should I pre-split one packet into two quantities BEFORE I start it?

I brewed up a batch of beer and split it between two fermentators. The fermentators are both the same size, I used the same packet of yeast for both. They are both sitting next to each other so the termperature is the same for both. One is bubbling along nicely while the other one is overflowing the air lock. Why would this be?

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.