Beer Forum

So I'm brewing an English Mild with wlp005. I'm 8 days into active fermentation (pitched 11 days ago, 32 hour lag), and there's a thick layer of stuff (I think it's the yeast) on top of my beer. It's my first all grain batch, and the first beer I've done in a carboy instead of a bucket. Whenever I opened my bucket in previous patches, a few floaties drifted around the top of the beer, but never this large and thick of a cake. Am I concerned too early? I thought a good portion of the yeast would have flocked out by now. But there's hardly any yeast in the bottom.

I don't want to try to take a gravity reading because I don't want to risk disturbing or contaminating my beer at this point. But I was hoping to bottle this weekend. Might I have to wait another week?

It's still early. I would take a gravity reading. It will give you an indication of where your at in relation to your target FG. Also, are you fermenting on the cool side? That could be the cause of your sluggish fermentation.

It's about 65 degrees for fermentation.

65 is fine for 005. Take the gravity reading, give everything a nice soak in your sanitizer before sticking it down in your beer, you wont end up with a contaminated beer. when you hit your preferred FG drop your temp to get that yeast to floc out.

Leave it alone. EVERY batch has that thick krausen. You probably just haven't been watching it through a carboy before. Your buckets had this too, most likely they fell before you opened the bucket to look. This one is just taking longer. Give it time and it will fall on its own, then take the gravity reading a few days after the top clears.

PorkSlapper wrote:when you hit your preferred FG drop your temp to get that yeast to floc out.

Sorry, this is poor advice. NEVER stop fermentation prematurely. You will end up with either a sweet/off flavored kegged beer, or bottle bombs.
Let it finish out and if its thin you should adjust the recipe/mash procedures to produce a more full bodied beer, or blend it with one that is overcompensated the other way.

BDawg wrote:

PorkSlapper wrote:when you hit your preferred FG drop your temp to get that yeast to floc out.

Sorry, this is poor advice. NEVER stop fermentation prematurely. You will end up with either a sweet/off flavored kegged beer, or bottle bombs.

Additionally, cold crashing upon immediately reaching terminal gravity will often result in diacetyl (butter) and/or acetaldehyde (green apple) in your beer.

Leave it alone. Like BDawg said, check the gravity a couple days after the krausen subsides. If it is around your terminal gravity, give it at least a few more days before you cold crash or rack or bottle so the yeast can clean up any diacetyl and acetaldehyde it produced.

As a rule, I plan on 3 weeks in the carboy for all my beers (or longer, sometimes). If that's too long for you, the best solution is to brew more often.

I follow the 'brew it and forget it' policy... it has plenty of time to finish it's work by the time I get around to bottling.