Using Krausening to prime

Lil guy

Lil guy

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Is there anyone here that exclusively krausens their beers for priming?
 
I prime my kegs with pure oxygen from my fermentation till it's time to spund.

I only need oxygen to aerate my wort going into the fermentor and for my kegerator.
 
Lil guy said:
Is there anyone here that exclusively krausens their beers for priming?
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My answer to your question is no I do not, but not a resounding no. Charlie Papazian discusses krausening in an old book of his that I have. It intrigued me and I seriously considered trying to krausen, but I never felt like saving wort from the batch in a sanitized jar. I worried it’d get infected before I packaged my beer. I always used dextrose when bottling (sorry nosybear). It was convenient. A 5 ounce package was included in every extract kit that I bought. When I stopped buying kits, I started buying dextrose for conditioning.
 
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I only want to krausen prime as a measure to keep my brew house active. I don't save wort for a krausen to pitch for priming. I am going to have to brew a batch to prime with each time fermentation is achieved to finish the previous. I got the second in fermenter, and working on third. Someone with a history of krausen priming would have good practices for formulating krausens to prime with. In my youthful newbie beer brewing opinion there ought be a good formula to work from that would involve Volume, ABV, and Yeast properties, etc. Just to throw a blanket number of krausen to use on every batch of beer to me seems a bit disrespectful to the repeatability of the finished product. I have a feeling that will be my ultimate education when it comes to brewing. I never take the easy way out. Cheers.
 
For quarts of gyle, use

(12 x gallons of wort)
______________________
(Specific gravity - 1) x 1000

Example

5 gallons of 1.040 wort is

60
__ = 1.5 qts of gyle
40
 
That formula explains the long time to bottle conditioning on my first batch. I read somewhere online a blanket number of a 20% krausen to prime with. I used that 20% number at bottling time and 20 days later still have active fermentation in the bottles. Thanks for that formula brother. I am going to start there on the next one and see how it goes. You my friend are a diabolical supergenius with a great library. Trading beers with you must be a great time. Cheers.
 
Don’t thank me, thank Charlie P. Remember, you need a known amount of sugar to krausen. When it’s just sugar, it’s easy - that’s all you measure. When that sugar is dissolved in gyle (unfermented wort for conditioning purposes), you need to know its specific gravity. The higher the gravity, the more sugar is in the solution, so the less of it you’ll need to get the sugar you want for conditioning.
 
I should be able to get close to the right rate even robbing from a batch at high krausen to condition with. From pitch to high krausen wont distort the sugar value enough to affect repeatability?? I get that gyle and krausen are not the same by the addition of the yeast, but controlling the environment around the fermenter and bottles afterwards should provide a narrower margin of repeatability. Thanks again. You dug it up for me so you get the credit.
 
Gyle doesn’t have any yeast in it. You would take your gyle before you pitched your yeast. Once there’s yeast in it, you don’t know how much sugar is left in it.
 
You got me thinking though. I guess if you measure the gravity when you take the gyle, you’d know how much sugar was left.
 
I would already have that at the time I took my wort gravity then pitched. I would just be waiting for high krausen to cane off a conditioning culture to pitch for bottling.
 
My fermentation is going to drive my brewing frequency.
 
When fermentation starts, sugar is consumed. If you start with a 1.045 wort before pitching yeast, you’ll have an unknown gravity at your “high krausen” time of extraction, less than 1.045. I’d recommend collecting gyle before you pitch the yeast. Then you know it’s still 1.045 instead of something less than that.
 
Or take a hydrometer reading of the beer at high krausen. Then you can figure out how much you need to pull off for priming the other batch.
 
I just force carbonate so I can't say I have.
 
ive used krausening once when i started out extract. Lil guy there is a krausening calc on here in calculators thats what i used.
 
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