The Krausen that Won't Fall

[airlocksniffer]

I've had Jamil's blonde ale from Brewing Classic Styles (all grain) in the primary for 10 days and still have a very thick, ever blowing off layer of krausen. I give it a good shake a few times a day to try to drop it out. I tested the gravity last night and was right on target. The sample tasted fine (albeit a bit yeasty). This is using US-05, in which I've never observed this behavior. The only difference this time vs other times using this yeast is that rather than aerating with an aquarium pump, I just shook my carboy for about 5-10 minutes. I've also began treating my water. In this batch (5 gallon), I added about 3 grams of gypsum and 4 grams of calcium chloride. The ferm temp is sitting about 64F. I'm considering cold crashing for a week or so to drop this stuff. Anybody else had this type of experience?

[herbaljoe]

Try raising the temp up to 70F for a couple days, this should finish up the fermentation and hopefully get the krausen to drop.

Also, from what I've heard it's not necessary to oxygenate your wort when using dry yeast. I don't think it is particularly harmful, but you could save yourself the trouble of doing this step.

[Old_Skool]

STOP SHAKING IT ...... you are just keeping the yeast in suspension + adding oxygen to fermented wort (now beer) which is generally bad + generally pissing it off. Sounds like you've had a good fermentation you should take a SG sample. If your SG is spot on or very close I would try to get the temp down to around 59 - 60deg. Maybe in your garage for awhile

[Old_Skool]

Actually I just remembered I brewed that same recipe last May and its also fermented like a mofo (of course we also had a warming trend so the wort was 68-70deg) ------- and I ended up cold crashing it in ice water down to about 55deg.

Turned out to be a great beer !!! So there you have it --- I'll be brewing this one very soon

[airlocksniffer]

STOP SHAKING IT ...... you are just keeping the yeast in suspension + adding oxygen to fermented wort (now beer) which is generally bad + generally pissing it off. Sounds like you've had a good fermentation you should take a SG sample. If your SG is spot on or very close I would try to get the temp down to around 59 - 60deg. Maybe in your garage for awhile

Not too worried about the shaking-there's a blanket of CO2.

[brewinhard]

Try raising the temp up to 70F for a couple days, this should finish up the fermentation and hopefully get the krausen to drop.

Also, from what I've heard it's not necessary to oxygenate your wort when using dry yeast. I don't think it is particularly harmful, but you could save yourself the trouble of doing this step.

Dry yeast or liquid yeast, the yeast still need dissolved oxygen for cell respiration and growth to occur. The oxygen addition should help the yeast reproduce faster and therefore ferment the wort more fully and quickly leading to a better finished product. I could be wrong here, but I do not see any reason why dry yeast would not benefit from oxygen aeration of the wort as liquid yeast does.

[TheBlack77]

I recently brewed the West Coast Blaster from BCS and shook the shit out of the carboy for about 10 minutes prior to pitching an assload of very healthy WLP001 that I got from my local brewery. I made a starter about 4 hours prior to pitching just to get it feeding. The krausen in the starter filled up my gallon jug. Pitched most of it. The krausen hung around for days after fermentation stopped before dropping out. I still couldn't see into the top of my better bottle until after I racked the beer out. Haven't tasted it yet as it's only been bottle conditioning for one week now.

[mediumsk]

sometimes the krausen sticks around even though the beer is done. taste it, if it tastes good and there is no diacytal or acytaldhyde like flavors then just cold crash it. I've found that there is no hard and fast rule with yeast and it's better to go from taste ( atleast on a homebrew level)