Krausen fell too early in my Barleywine?

[Wavewalker]

I brewed my barleywine on Saturday, and after some pretty active bubbling, things had really quieted down by yesterday, to only bubbling every couple minutes. I used 13.2 lb of extract, a pound of turbinado sugar, 2 packets of Scottish ale yeast, and 2 tsp. yeast nutrient. I checked this morning, and the krausen has fallen. I expected it to ferment pretty vigorously for a good deal longer. Did something go wrong? Should I pitch more yeast? Rouse the yeast (but would that present a danger of oxidation, since I opened the lid)?

What, if anything, do I do?

 

[BendBrewer]

Yeast can't tell time. You're just going to have to take a Hydro reading.

 

[Arneba28]

Take a gravity reading. It might of eaten its way through the majority of the sugar already and now just has a few points to finish up. chill you and let it sit another month.

 

[Wavewalker]

I would take a gravity reading, but I must have messed it up, because the original reading said 1.042, so I think the wort wasn't well mixed with the topoff water when I took the sample. I guess I could still take some readings over the next few days and see if it's changing.

 

[erikpete18]

You're probably right about the original reading, unless you're doing a 20-gal batch! Since its extract/sugar its pretty easy to calculate what it would have been since all of the sugars are already there. Assuming you used liquid extract, that would put it around 1.107 for a 5 gal batch.

Go ahead and take a reading and it will give you an idea of where you are at if you're desperate to know. Otherwise, I'd just let it hang out for 3-4 weeks. The yeast will continue to work, even without a krausen. I brewed a wee heavy (~1.08) a few weeks ago with the wyeast scottish ale 1728 and the krausen fell pretty quickly, but haven't gone back to check on the gravity yet. It also depends on what temp the fermenter was at, its possible the yeast just kicked into high gear and took care of a good amount of the sugars real quick. Give it at least another 3-4 weeks on the yeast (I've gone up to 6 months on the yeast with barleywines), and then plan on aging that somewhere for at least another 6 months, maybe longer.

 

[Wavewalker]

You're probably right about the original reading, unless you're doing a 20-gal batch! Since its extract/sugar its pretty easy to calculate what it would have been since all of the sugars are already there. Assuming you used liquid extract, that would put it around 1.107 for a 5 gal batch.

Go ahead and take a reading and it will give you an idea of where you are at if you're desperate to know. Otherwise, I'd just let it hang out for 3-4 weeks. The yeast will continue to work, even without a krausen. I brewed a wee heavy (~1.08) a few weeks ago with the wyeast scottish ale 1728 and the krausen fell pretty quickly, but haven't gone back to check on the gravity yet. It also depends on what temp the fermenter was at, its possible the yeast just kicked into high gear and took care of a good amount of the sugars real quick. Give it at least another 3-4 weeks on the yeast (I've gone up to 6 months on the yeast with barleywines), and then plan on aging that somewhere for at least another 6 months, maybe longer.

Okay, thanks. I won't worry about it, then.