Need a little advice about Yeast 'Head'

1 year ago | saracen (Moderator)

I am using Wyeast 1187 Ringwood which is described as, 'A top cropping yeast strain.' The information I've found (http://hbd.org/uchima/yeastzone/topcrop.html) suggests rousing the wort regularly because all the yeast will be up in the 'head' rather than in the wort fermenting. My concern is that the top of the head seems very brown and nasty looking. In the past, with dried yeasts, the advice has always been to skim off this brown 'scum'. Any experience out there to help, please?

If you're not living on the edge..... you're taking up too much space!!

Planning: - To get some more brews on now the weather's a bit cooler
Fermenting: - Ginger Beer experiment
Conditioning: - A normal bitter with Styrians
Drinking: - All of it!!

E-mail: arnyfris@gmail.com

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Responses

Greg:

Posted 1 year ago by Admin

Hi Saracen, sorry missed this one before. I would leave it alone. All yeasts look different and you risk contaminating if you start removing skum from the top. If you are still worried transfer to secondary after 4 or 5 days.

Tony:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

I'd go with what Greg says .. and I've never skimmed 'scum' off the top of a brew ever. I figure that if there was nothing nasty in there at the time of pitching the yeast, there'll be nothing nasty in there after fermentation

Beer will get you through the times of no money better than money will get you through the times of no beer
(with grateful thanks to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and slightly adapted)

saracen:

Posted 1 year ago by Moderator

Thanks for that Tony & Greg. Sometimes that head looks pretty nasty and I read somewhere that you should skim the dried brown layer off the top as it will taint the beer. Having said that, my Wyeast Ringwood fermented well and, as it's a higly floculent strain, I roused it after a couple of days as advised. The head disappeared into the beer and was never seen again.

Greg:

Posted 1 year ago by Admin

The brown stuff is unwanted crud kicked out by the yeast (mostly stuff carried over from the boiler) but I think the benefits of removing it compared to the risk of introducing unfriendly bacteria when removing are debatable.

Common practice in the states is to use a blow off tube which is attached the airlock and catches the crud but not used one myself.

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