Should I poke the Krausen?

[seyahmit]

This is my second extract brew. I boiled this hefe this past Saturday. I was going to take a hydrometer reading tonight to see how the fermentation was going. While I was prying the lid off the bucket, I kept getting whiffs of a bad smell. I got the bucket open and was treated to this sight after 5 days in the primary.

This is a about a two inch thick Krausen. Should I skim this off or let it fall back into the beer when it is ready. This is my first time using the bucket. My first beer and my other batch are in a carboy with blow off tubes, so most of this stuff went into the blow off bucket. I’m guess the nice beer smell is somewhere under that stuff.

Do I leave it alone for a while or do something about the Krausen?

 

[gruntingfrog]

First thing you should do is put that lid back on.

Just let it go. When it falls back in, you know it's ready for the secondary...

 

[seyahmit]

I did put the lid back on. I only had it off long enough to clean and sanitize the lid and airlock.

 

[batch]

Are you using a top cropping yeast?
I'm brewing an American Wheat with Wyeast 1010 yeast ("a true
top cropping yeast" they say). I use a bucket for a primary.
After two days I popped the top and saw something similar to this
http://www.hbd.org/uchima/yeastzone/topcrop.html
So, I poked the yeast back down.
I think Mike Uchima makes a reasonable case on his web page to
do the poking down -- after all, he says,
For yeasts which behave like this, it is a good idea to agitate the fermenter once or twice a day, when fermentation starts to slow. If this is not done, the beer will take a very long time to finish fermenting out, since most of the yeast is up in the foam, instead of down in the beer doing its job!

So you might check to see if your yeast is top cropping or not.
Might wait to see what more experienced brewers say.
I guess it depends on your taste for experimentation.
-batch

 

[seyahmit]

I am using Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen yeast. According to that website, it is a top cropping yeast.

 

[Bernie Brewer]

Looks like beer to me. Leave it. RDWHAH.

 

[Spyk'd]

Never, ever, never, ever, ever, ever, never take the lid off of your bucket unless you're ready to rack it.......and how do you know? Watch your friggin' airlock Sherlock!@!@!@!

I'm having less and less confidence in our future and literature. It seems to me if something causes a one to read a bit too much, well, they just ought not to and ask a buncher really ridiculous kestions...ana nowa......er.......




Maybe it's just me. This is in the drunken ramblings right?



I'm originally from southern california, so, the south, er......yeah?

 

[homebrewer_99]

Man, what a BEAUTIFUL sight!

Leave it alone.

 

[alemonkey]

Every wheat beer I brew seems to have a long lasting krausen too. Wheat has a lot of proteins, so the krausen tends to be bigger and last longer. I wouldn't recommend sticking anything in there to "poke" it down - I would never stick anything into a fermenter except a tube to siphon it out. You're risking contamination by doing that. If you want to do anything just agitate the bucket. But, if there's still active fermentation going on the krausen will just reform.

A good rule of thumb is when in doubt, leave the fermenter alone and don't worry about it.


Oh yeah, I've noticed they tend to stink, too. It will go away.

 

[seyahmit]

There was absolutely no activity in the air lock. I watched that thing for 5 minutes and not one bubble. So I decided to to take some readings to see if fermentation was stuck or finished. Like I said before, the lid was off long enough to wash and sanitize the lid and airlock. I left it alone after that.

Thanks your help and words of encouragement master brewer Spyk'd.

 

[Kaiser]

Taking the lid off is not to big of a deal. the kraeusen actually potects the beer from germs. You could have easily poked through it with a turkey baster to get a sample.

I have skimmed the krausen before. Some (especially german whet beer brewers) claim that it is benefitial to remove the brown gunk that you are seeing, but most home brewers will tell you that it doesn't make a difference. I'm not sure if they are talking from experience in this case.

Since you didn't see any activity in the airlock, you checked. This is what I would have done too

If you want to skim the brown gunk off the kraeusen sanitize a large spoon and go for it. But I guess you will be fine with leaving it alone. Take a sample and decide based on that if you want to rack or not.

Kai

 

[Spyk'd]

Thanks your help and words of encouragement master brewer Spyk'd.

I guess I thought I was being amusing last night and it apparently came out wrong. I appologize if I offended you and was actually trying to help.



Once again, sorry if my sense of humor sounded harsh. I'm truly not here to offend anyone. I guess I was just in "a mood".


The picture was actually beautiful, you're doing great!

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

Taking the lid off is not to big of a deal. the kraeusen actually potects the beer from germs. You could have easily poked through it with a turkey baster to get a sample.

I have skimmed the krausen before. Some (especially german whet beer brewers) claim that it is benefitial to remove the brown gunk that you are seeing, but most home brewers will tell you that it doesn't make a difference. I'm not sure if they are talking from experience in this case.

I'm in total agreement here. I frequently remove the lid from my bucket whether it's to skim the kraeusen (something I've started doing recently), take a SG reading, or just gaze longingly at my wort while gently sniffing it (go where you want to with that). The only failure mode I can see for contaminating your wort in this case is not sanitizing whatever instrument you use to skim the kraeusen off...otherwise open fermentors would not be viable yet we know they are.

I wouldn't take the lid off for the hell of it or be laissez-faire in sanitation measures, but in and of itself removing the lid is a non-issue.

 

[cweston]

I wouldn't take the lid off for the hell of it or be laissez-faire in sanitation measures, but in and of itself removing the lid is a non-issue.

I think most people naturally start out more on the side of sanitation Nazis. In those first 5 batches or so, every time you have the least little breech of total sanitation you're convinced the batch is going to be ruined. Eventually, you realize that it's not as easy to wreck beer as you once assumed.

I look at it this way: why are so many food and apthacary products stored in an alcohol base? Because of the preservative and antibacterial qualities of alcohol!

Malted grains want to become beer, just as grapes left alone for long enough will become wine. (Not good wine, of course, but you know what I mean.)

 

[Glibbidy]

I look at it this way: why are so many food and apthacary products stored in an alcohol base? Because of the preservative and antibacterial qualities of alcohol!

Say this gives me an idea, maybe I can convince my funeral director to embalm me with a Belgian Trippel after I expire!

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

Say this gives me an idea, maybe I can convince my funeral director to embalm me with a Belgian Trippel after I expire!

I told my wife to pass me under the glazer at Krispy Kreme. Hopefully it's not a health concern for the factory.

 

[Chairman Cheyco]

Say this gives me an idea, maybe I can convince my funeral director to embalm me with a Belgian Trippel after I expire!

Forget the funeral director, start embalming yourself right now!

 

[jldesign]

I love to poke the Krausen as much as the next guy

maybe you had a leak in the bucket lid?

 

[Glibbidy]

Brilliant! I think I'll bail out of work early, and get a head start on my weekend.
Maybe poke a little krausen myself.

 

[Bernie Brewer]

There was absolutely no activity in the air lock. I watched that thing for 5 minutes and not one bubble. So I decided to to take some readings to see if fermentation was stuck or finished. Like I said before, the lid was off long enough to wash and sanitize the lid and airlock. I left it alone after that.

Thanks your help and words of encouragement master brewer Spyk'd.

An absence of activity in the airlock is not necessarily an indication of no fermentation. Perhaps the seal in the lid of your bucket is bad and all the CO2 is escaping out of the seal instead of the airlock. This is only your second brew and therefore your bucket is probably still in good shape, but it won't last forever. When you replace it, get a carboy or a better bottle, then you know if your airlock is a good indicator or not. Cheers.

 

[sonvolt]

I love to poke the Krausen as much as the next guy

Uhhhhh . . . . silent note to self - - - - > don't drink jldesign's beer. . . .

 

[seyahmit]

Thanks for all the help guys. This was actually my first batch in the bucket. I also have a glass carboy but needed to use the bucket because I brewed two batches in one day. I don't plan on using the bucket again. I need to stock up on carboys!

 

[DAAB]

You should poke the missus, kick the cat and skim the krausen.

Its probably too late now but if you skim all that cr4p off you'll find a nice clean creamy white protective yeast head forms. This supposedly improves the finished product as does preventing all that gunk from collapsing back in to your beer by removing it.
All the brewers I know do it including myself, sanitation and avoiding infection isnt difficult. The idea is to remove the gunk but leave the yeast head below intact although i've removed the whole lot before with a seive because i'm too impatient to faff around, no harm was done, my usual recipe still tasted as good as ever as far as I was concerned.

I'd keep using the buckets, you can fit taps to them and avoid having to syphon, I cant see the point of 6Gal Carbouys, they are a completely unecessary pain in the ar$e.

 

[jldesign]

Uhhhhh . . . . silent note to self - - - - > don't drink jldesign's beer. . . .

I always sanitize before hand? maybe I should after as well.

back to the question: I've been using the same 3 buckets for primary and secondary for over 15 matches. I've only had a bad seal once and I could hear it. I always bleach bath for 1/2 to hour before and after use to kill off the nasties then use some sanstar before filling. as long as you keep them clean no not scratch them and never keep anything inside them they will be fine - a little stinky from hops and a little discolored but clean. works for me and easier for me to use and store thats all - I have carboys just never use.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

Taking the lid off is not to big of a deal. the kraeusen actually potects the beer from germs. You could have easily poked through it with a turkey baster to get a sample.

I have skimmed the krausen before. Some (especially german whet beer brewers) claim that it is benefitial to remove the brown gunk that you are seeing, but most home brewers will tell you that it doesn't make a difference. I'm not sure if they are talking from experience in this case.

Since you didn't see any activity in the airlock, you checked. This is what I would have done too

If you want to skim the brown gunk off the kraeusen sanitize a large spoon and go for it. But I guess you will be fine with leaving it alone. Take a sample and decide based on that if you want to rack or not.

Kai

OK, I know this is nuts and I'm sorry for necro'ing the thread, but doing a top cropping Yorkshire strain and working on figuring out regular rousing, against all common wisdom. The strain is highly flocculant and this brewery's primary clears in about 72 hours. I start from a slant and each time, have no issue getting it going (in fact, realized I can't use a carboy for the final prop. step):

Did not expect this.

At any rate, I've never open fermented before, never roused as I am, brazenly aerating well into the fermentation cycle, and never harvested from top cropping.

I have no idea what the braun hefe is. What I thought was it, is said by many to just be normal krausen. This yeast always throughs a very thin head of brown, even, no dark flecks, etc, resting on white foam - just a cappuccino mat sitting on a thin, white mat of foam. This would be 24 hours in, on average. If I try to skim this "braun hefe" away, I skim everything away - it breaks apart and I cannot leave the thin layer of white behind.

Normally, I'd say, wait till the krausen is much thicker - then it should be easier to skim the brown covering (if it even is the braun hefe or brown head), leaving a healthy bank of foam, eventually dense with yeast, behind. The problem is these breweries begin their rousing/splashing stage within 24 hours or so, do it every 3 hours, and if you look at their pics, they yeast cauliflowers are extremely happy.

So, I'm lost.

-This is 36 hours in. The light tan foamy parts. Brown head (ignore the darker brown islands floating in the wort "seas," seems a trend at least with my use of HH. Do you skim all of this?

My second question then asks, at least as it is in my fermentors, if I skim the brown head early in the process (like DeKlerck pretty forcefully indicates), I'll have a completely exposed wort surface again - there's no krausen again - ...contamination concerns.

So with all this, hope it isn't too rambling, lost as to knowing what a braunhefe truly looks like, when to remove it and, in the connection of Yorkshire brewing, commencement of rousing with these concerns in place.

Thanks.