Mega-Krausen On Starter

[Chris Scott]

I've been making a starter for the last couple of days, gradually feeding boiled wort into my flask, now it seems to have taken off, and blowing off shitloads of krausen within an hour or so of adding the last wort. What should I do? Crash cool?

[Chris Scott]

bumping...

[bart]

probably belongs in the home brew forum.... i'd most likely just not worry about it. or much better... get brewing and pitch the yeast!!

[Chris Banks]

Its messy ay! I had the same prob with a 1469 starter I found giving it a good swirl to break up the foam as nessecary till it died down - worked ok

Like Bart says shame your brews not ready to be pitched into!

You can buy an anti foaming product to prevent such things but Im a bit anti that sort of thing...Bloody Anti Chemical Hippys!! 

[Chris Scott]

Yeah this is the last of my 1469 top-croppings, been having the same problem 3944 belgian wit, both "true" top croppers from memory. Does the amount of vortex affect the krausen production?

Wish I had the chance to brew during the week, but too much on.

I'll probably stay away from the anti-foam, just make a bit of a yeasty mess at work.

[Chris Mills]

Use a bigger flask next time?

I try to keep mine less than half-filled and figure that all that krausen is made from heaps of lovely yeast waiting to get at freshly chilled wort.

[Chris Scott]

Yeah mate, a lot of good yeast gone to waste, used some of the krausen to make another starter though. I didnt know if you can get bigger than 5 litres? It had settled right down by the time I got there in the morning.

[Chris Mills]

I hadn't realised it was a 5L flask! Wow! I generally don't fill my flasks to capacity with starters so that they have room to expand.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html
Check out the recommended figures for using a stirplate. For my 50L batches with an OG of 1.048 all that should be needed is about 2L of starter.

[Chad Keven]

good link takes some guess work out aye

 

[Chris Scott]

I often use Mr Malty for making starters from fresh yeast, this starter was made from harvested top-croppings that were fairly old, so had no idea on viability/concentrations. First two wort additions showed only a litle krausen, then after the third it really took off (possible yeast infection???) only went to 4.75 litres (MrMalty says 5.37 at lowest slurry settings) for 40L of a 1.074 ale.