Green Krausen!

[vchead]

Checked my brew yesterday. It was bubbling along nicely but as I looked in to see what was happening I was horrified to see green foam on top, not the nice creamy colour I expected. Initial thoughts were of a horrible infection but as I retraced my steps on brew day I realised I failed to strain the Saaz after giving it a quick boil. Recipe is:

Lager goo
BE2
100g Dex
100g LDM
150g Carapils steeped then boiled
20 g Saaz thrown in to carapils for last 5 mins of boil
US 05
Forgot to read initial Gravity
Temp around 16-18 deg
23l

Threw boiled grain and saaz in without straining first, mainly because I was trying to finish brew in time so missus wouldn't get the shits with me for brewing beer in the garage rather than feeding and bathing the children on a Sunday night.

Now Krausen is green, smell coming out if fermenter is extremely hoppy and I am wondering what I can expect from this brew?

Anyone know what this is going to turn out like?

Thanks,

Rodders

 

[warra48]

You can expect a lovely hoppy brew.

Just leave the beer, hops and yeast to do their job, and they will eventually all settle on the bottom of your fermenter.

It's no different to dry hopping. I don't see you have a problem.

 

[Davo6869]

I agree warra. Rodders hasn't got a problem, just a fermenter full of liquid love.

Now all he needs is for his wife to recognise his nurturing skills and harness them in the direction of his young 'uns.

 

[mfdes]

Green krausen is perfectly normal in hoppy beers.
I also get it all the time if I'm sloppy whirlpooling off the pellet residue.

MFS.

 

[Fatgodzilla]

Green krausen is perfectly normal in hoppy beers.
I also get it all the time if I'm sloppy whirlpooling off the pellet residue.

MFS.

Green krausen doesn't make green beer. Green food colouring does that nicely - ah, the joy of St Patrick's Day! Depending on alpha of the Saaz, doubt also whether 20g for 5 minutes will add too much hop flavour to beer bit it should smell damn fine on the pour.

 

[vchead]

Thanks Guys. Good to hear from you Davo El Beero

Rodders

 

[itguy1953]

Threw boiled grain and saaz in without straining first, mainly because I was trying to finish brew in time so missus wouldn't get the shits with me for brewing beer in the garage rather than feeding and bathing the children on a Sunday night.

Now Krausen is green, smell coming out if fermenter is extremely hoppy and I am wondering what I can expect from this brew?

Anyone know what this is going to turn out like?


Watch out with the Saaz hops as they might not all settle to the bottom. You might need to cold condition your beer in a secondary fermenter to make sure all hops drops out.

I did what you did ONCE (on 2 brews), and I got a lot of hops in my first few bottles. I then decided to get a filter and filter out the hops. The hops quickly clogged up the filter, and I had a hell of a time getting the beer filtered.

On the second brew, I thought I would be smart and drop it into a keg. Well....not so smart, as the hops were sucked up in the liquid offtake pipe and clogged it. I had to pull the pipe out and backflush it with water from the hose then reinsert. I then filtered this keg into another keg.

Lesson learned. I now filter hops out if I boil them before I put them in the fermenter. I am about to swap to dry hopping in kegs, and I will put the hops in a stocking so that they stay in the keg. This way I can get them out easily. A benefit of dry hopping is that you can taste the beer first without flavour/aroma hops, and then if it is not hoppy enough, you can put a 12g tea bag in the keg, and leave it a week or so, and taste again. If still not hoppy enough, add another tea bag.

Be careful with dry hopping though, as I tasted some beer recently that had been dry hopped for 2 and then 6 weeks with Amarillo. The 2 week old beer was great, very hoppy and terrific aroma. At 6 weeks, the beer had a grassy flavour to it. Still good to drink, but it was better at 2 weeks. Lesson....take out the hop tea bag after 2 weeks. You can do this by pushing your beer from one keg to another, and you can also filter it at the same time.

Barry

 

[~MikE]

i hardly ever strain my hops. tho i should of for my last one cos i went to add the rest of my hops flowers as a dry hop addition, open up the fermenter and sure enough, there was about 4cm of flowers where the krausen should be. threw it in, gave it a stir and it continued bubbling away...