Floaters!

My hefeweizen has been fermenting for nearly 3 weeks and there are still floaters near the top (those little bits that look like cork). I used wyeast 3068, its been kept at a constant 18*c (~64*f). OG was 1.051 and gravity after 2 weeks was 1.014. I thought it was done but thought i'd give it another week to sink the floaters. any ideas?

Just yeast rafts, don't worry about them

Remember that you are going to want those "floaters," both yeast and wheat protein, in suspension in the final beer. The yeast and wheat protein is what gives the Hefeweizen most of it's taste!

When I'm racking my Hefes to the keg/bottling bucket, I typically give the fermenter a nice swirl to suspend a bit of that goodness, then also let the autosiphon rest right in the trub to pull up some of that as well.

Yeah, I definitely want yeast in the bottle but these are pretty big chunks, some of them are about 10mm long. Is that really normal for a finished beer? When I pour, I swirl the bottle around and all the yeast gets dissolved, I find it hard to imagine these bits dissolving.

You can either wait for them to sink or rack the beer from under them. As long as it's at a stable FG.

They are being buoyed to the surface by the residual CO2 degassing, then they clump together. Once you have the finished beer, they won't clump anymore and won't be able to just buoy on the surface like that, so it'll all work itself out in the end

Ok. I'm going to give it a few more days at a slightly higher temp and let it cool down before I bottle, see if it finishes of. I might pour through a biab mesh to get the big lumps as a last resort

triskelion said:

Ok. I'm going to give it a few more days at a slightly higher temp and let it cool down before I bottle, see if it finishes of. I might pour through a biab mesh to get the big lumps as a last resort

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Do not *pour* your beer through mesh. The pouring will aerate your beer and lead to oxidation.

You can put the biab mesh bag around the end of your racking cane to filter out any gunk.

I'm using the coopers fermenter with the spigot on the bottom. I was thinking of puting the bag between the tap and bottling tube. So it should be free of air. Do you think I might still have a problem? Hoping it won't come to any kind of filtering though.

I've never transferred in that manner, so someone else will have to chime in on that. Sorry.

The Cooper's DIY fermenter uses the same "little bottler" as my Cooper's micro brew FV does. take the pin valve off the bottling wand & atach a piece of 3/8" tubing to it long enough to go down & half way around the bottom of the bottling bucket. The bag won't fit over the wand or tubing & still go into place. But not to worry. If you waited long enough for the beer to settle out clear or slightly misty,the trub & yeast shouold be well compacted below the level of the spigot. I can easily get clear beer out of mine in the way described. Even tilting the FV to get the last bit of beer out,save for about the last half bottle or so. No trub or yeast get through.

I've brought the temp from 18*c up to 20*c, as this seems to be a common procedure near the end of fermentation. Most of the floaters have actually disappeared already!

I like your username. From Star trek series episode "The Gamesters of Triskellion". And since 20C is 68F,you're good so far.

Ha ha. Yeah that was a good episode

How many quatlues did you spend on your system?

Floaters were still there. Bottled it anyway, didn't want weird flavours from being in the primary for over 3 weeks. Will report back in a few weeks

Ok. This beer is taking a long time to condition. I think its been in the bottles for about 5 weeks. But it is very good. Given another few weeks and I'm not sure if I could distinguish it from franziskaner! I suspect that the long conditioning could be because I foolishly tried to mash torified wheat on its own and add it to the lme.