trombasteve
Member
Hi all,
I've had a problem with my past two batches that I'm kind of scratching my head about. I've been brewing (AG, BIAB) for a few years now, and moved to krausening for bottling about two years ago, and have generally been very happy with the results.
However, my past two batches (both recipes I've made before with better results) have refused to clear after krausening (both were clear in the fermenter), didn't carbonate all that well, and stayed stubbornly under-attenuated with with some funny off tastes (none of which were present before bottling). Basically, I think the krausening never really finished, and yeast stayed in suspension. (The two yeasts were WLP 810 and WLP 002, and the OGs were 1.060 and 1.054, so nothing too exotic, and fermentations appeared to be healthy, and both were left for roughly 2-3 weeks before bottling.)
My usual process is to siphon some of the yeast cake from the primary into the Erlenmeyer flask containing my krausening wort the day before bottling, leave it to do its thing, then bottle roughly 15-20 hours later. I haven't been all that strict about the quantity of yeast cake I siphon to inoculate the krausening wort, or oxygenating the krausening wort. In both of these cases, the gravity of the krausening wort hadn't declined very far from the OG (1.060 down to 1.047, and 1.054 down to 1.045). The quantities have been relatively small (1.5 litres in a 5 litre flask - I brew 2.5 gallon batches), so I was initially afraid that high krausen had already come and gone and I hadn't seen it because of the large surface area, but that seems less likely judging from the gravities.
I guess sanitation is always a possibility, but I haven't had generally had sanitation problems, and there definitely haven't been any gushers/bottle bombs.
Can anyone shed some light on this? How important is it that the krausening wort is at high krausen when bottling? Am I barking up the wrong tree?
I've had a problem with my past two batches that I'm kind of scratching my head about. I've been brewing (AG, BIAB) for a few years now, and moved to krausening for bottling about two years ago, and have generally been very happy with the results.
However, my past two batches (both recipes I've made before with better results) have refused to clear after krausening (both were clear in the fermenter), didn't carbonate all that well, and stayed stubbornly under-attenuated with with some funny off tastes (none of which were present before bottling). Basically, I think the krausening never really finished, and yeast stayed in suspension. (The two yeasts were WLP 810 and WLP 002, and the OGs were 1.060 and 1.054, so nothing too exotic, and fermentations appeared to be healthy, and both were left for roughly 2-3 weeks before bottling.)
My usual process is to siphon some of the yeast cake from the primary into the Erlenmeyer flask containing my krausening wort the day before bottling, leave it to do its thing, then bottle roughly 15-20 hours later. I haven't been all that strict about the quantity of yeast cake I siphon to inoculate the krausening wort, or oxygenating the krausening wort. In both of these cases, the gravity of the krausening wort hadn't declined very far from the OG (1.060 down to 1.047, and 1.054 down to 1.045). The quantities have been relatively small (1.5 litres in a 5 litre flask - I brew 2.5 gallon batches), so I was initially afraid that high krausen had already come and gone and I hadn't seen it because of the large surface area, but that seems less likely judging from the gravities.
I guess sanitation is always a possibility, but I haven't had generally had sanitation problems, and there definitely haven't been any gushers/bottle bombs.
Can anyone shed some light on this? How important is it that the krausening wort is at high krausen when bottling? Am I barking up the wrong tree?