How bad an idea is skimming krausen?

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

moto748

Landlord.
Joined
Jul 15, 2010
Messages
1,730
Reaction score
1,693
It struck me, reading a comment from another poster today, that in the past I always used to skim my brews a couple of days after pitching., i think this dates back to when I always used leaf hops, and the krausen would at first look 'dirty', with brown flecks in it, which I assumed were leftover bits of hops etc. So when the fermentation was vigorous, I'd skim that one, and then leave it when the krausen looked clean and creamy. But I haven't felt the need to do that so much lately, but rightly or wrongly, I put that down to mostly using pellet hops these days. But does the panel think any skimming is inadvisable anyway?
 
You can crop it if you want to take some of the yeast to re-use.

In my view it's best to just let everything settle to the bottom once fermentation activity has reduced. The fragments won't do any harm in there and you're only risking introducing unwanted microbes by going into in the FV.
 
Any playing around like that give a much greater risk of introducing an infection but for no real gain. Just let it do it's thing for a few weeks and all the crud will drop to the bottom. You can cold crash after fermentation if you like to further help clear the end product, I only bother though if I've added dry hops.
 
You can cold crash after fermentation if you like


No, I can't! 😀

But I'll live with that. And leave my krausens alone in future. I must say this kolsch is looking very healthy indeed, a good inch and a half of creamy white goodness on top there.
 
Back
Top