Kreuesen after 10 days?

[Ralph Icebag]

I brewed a ten gallon batch of Tasty APA and split the batch with WLP001 and the other half with WLP060. The fermenter with the WLP001 Pitched at 68 deg, had a lag phase(@ 70 deg.) of about 8 hours and a nice vigorous growth phase(@62-64 deg) until day 6. with the exception of a slight sulpher odor it smells nice and clean. At high kreuesen, the kreuesen was about 3" high and now after 10 days it still has not completely settled to the bottom and is about a 1/2" high , foamy and clean looking. This is the first time I have used WLP001 and wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this before or if this might indicate a problem . At this point I'm not too worried because there's no detectable off flavors. The plan is to bring the temp to 68 deg up for a diacetyl rest, leave it in the primary for a total of 2 weeks and dry hop in a secondary for 4 days. This is probably my 30th batch of all grain and have not seen this before.
In comparison the fermenter with the WLP060 has settled to the bottom after about 5 days and has showed a more typical fermentation although it has a lot more sulpher odor to it. From what I've read that is typical for that yeast.(first time using that one too) . hope you can shed a little light on this one Thanks

[adamK]

This does not seem out of character for 001 at 62 degrees, I have had similar experiences at 64-65degrees. To avoid it next time (if you want), you can speed it up with a bigger pitch of yeast, more O2, and/or by slowly ramping up the temps as fermentation progresses. Should be a nice clean beer!

Also, if yo want to give it more time, you can skip the secondary and dry hop in primary...

[brewinhard]

Totally normal. I have had that yeast strain not drop its krausen until I cold crashed it around day 14 or so. You could give the fermenter a swirl which will help to drop some of that krausen a bit back into the beer. Have no worries, I am sure you will make a delicious beer!

[Ralph Icebag]

allright, glad to hear that. Are there other yeast strains that do not settle out like that ? Gave it a good swirl on Sat. but it reformed , and again an hour ago, most of it did settle out ,now there is only a thin layer of foam. At first I thought it might have gotten contaminated,glad that's not the case. Thanks you guys and everyone on this board. I started brewing in the early 90's upuntil about 2003 and started up again about 2 years ago. So I had to re-learn and unlearn some of the common practices at the time. Most of the time the answers to my questions can be found by searching this forum ,there is an amazing amount of info here.

[brewinhard]

There are several major true top-cropping yeasts I have brewed with that take forever to drop their krausen. Strains like WY 3787 Trappist High Gravity, both WL and WY witbier strains, and WY 3068 (hefe yeast) produce gigantic blow-offs and take a long time for the krausen to subside. I usually don't wait for them to drop, providing the gravity is fully attenuated for my recipe. Just cold-crash and the yeast drop to the bottom. But man, they are stubborn!

[Afterlab]

A few more White Labs strains that are top croppers:

WLP 800 - Pilsner Lager (Pilsner Urquell)
WLP 570 - Belgian Golden Ale (Duvel)
WLP 300 - Hefeweizen Ale
WLP 029 - German Ale/Kolsch
WLP 028 - Edinburgh Ale
WLP 013 - London Ale
WLP 001 - California Ale


2 things I would throw out to you Ralph. The first is to skip transferring to secondary unless you plan on leaving the beer sit in the carboy or bucket for an extended amount of time. Dry hopping in primary works just as well. The second is to dry hop at the later stages of fermentation when your beer has almost reached final gravity. That way you still have some CO2 activity circulating those dry hops around in the beer. If you wait until fermentation is completely over then your hops may stay in suspension for a day or two and then drop to the bottom with the yeast and trub.

[Ralph Icebag]

it always good to know what to expect from a particular strain during fermentation. it's good piece of mind until I get more confident in my brewing skills. The strains you guys have listed are some of the strains on my list for upcoming brews. I will definitely dry hop in the primary. I guess it just makes sense to fore go the secondary for a bunch of reasons, like eliminating a step,and eliminating a chance of contamination,and letting the yeast do it's thing. I would like to start harvesting the yeast that is in the primary from this batch . Will dry hopping in the primary make the harvesting and rinsing part more problematic ? Also which is more preferable with with these top cropping yeasts , to harvest some Kreuesen or to go the yeast rinsing route?

[brewinhard]

Dry hopping in the primary will lead to lots of hop debris and oils sticking to your yeast as everything falls to the bottom of your fermenter. You can reuse your yeast but a good rinsing will be in order to minimize the hop particles and oils from transferring into your next brew and possibly affecting your yeast's performance. With the true top cropping yeasts, you can easily harvest from the fresh krausen (very healthy vigorous yeast) with a sanitized spoon providing you are fermenting with a bucket. In a carboy this obviously poses a problem and you will need to harvest after racking the beer out of the fermenter.