BRY-97 Krausen hanging on after 11 days? Is this normal for this yeast?

[GPNewBrew]

Made a batch of Uncle Fezziwig 11 days ago; it took about 24 hours to see any activity through my blowoff tube, but then it went to town. Didn't have a great amount of headspace in my mini brew bucket (a little over 20%, and I definitely blew some krausen into the blowoff bottle. After about 5-6 days, bubbling was gone, but I ignored that and just figured l'd leave it for about another week, just to mature and clean out any off-products. I opened up my SS brew bucket this morning before taking a SG sample, and was really surprised to still see a pretty dense layer of Krausen, along with some Sticky Krausen sticking to the lid of my brew bucket. Using other dry yeasts like US-04/US-05, and Notty, I'm not used to seeing any Krausen after this amount of time (10 days), especially with fermentation essentially complete. My OG for this brew was 1.060, and my reading this morning was between 1.006 and 1.008, giving me an ABV of about 7%. I only made a half batch of this (2.75 gal into fermenter) and pitched a whole package (11g). I fermented at about 67-68 deg F and it's been maturing at about 71-72 deg.

It tastes good (maybe a little "warm" and maybe strong on the ginger I added, but mostly I'm surprised about the Krausen still hanging on, especially since it looks like I'm at or near final gravity.

Any experience with this out there?

Gary

 

[Franktalk]

The short answer is yes. I use it now and again, and I often have to rack it from below the krausen after about three weeks. You should probably give it a couple of weeks in the keg/bottle to get the rest of the yeast to drop out.

 

[mattdee1]

I used to use BRY97 all the time, and I still really like it, but I've kind of moved away from it for this reason. It does great work, but it's sloooooooow.

 

[brewbama]

Bry-97 is my go-to yeast. So much so that I bought a 500g brick. Let’s just say I use it A LOT. I have a stainless fermenter so I don’t know if the krauzen sticks around or not because I don’t open the lid before I transfer. I get krauzen on the lid and in the blow off jar every brew.

I usually pitch yeast along with Fermax as I fill the fermenter thru a fine mesh strainer and get the first ‘blip’ on my Tilt hydrometer at 16 +/- 2 hrs like clockwork.

Five days later the hydrometer log flatlines, again, like clockwork, I close transfer to a keg, and cold crash it under CO2 pressure.

When a spot in my serving fridge opens but not sooner than three days later, I move it over there, tap it, fine it and pull a cloudy pint. The next day the beer is crystal clear.

Using this process I routinely go from grain to glass in ~10 days.

 

[GPNewBrew]

Original poster here; just wanted to provide an update. My Krausen finally disappeared. The lid is still covered with the sticky stuff (because it had no where else to go), but the beer is clear. Will be dropping it in a keg tomorrow with a little CO2 purge for a few days of cold crashing. That is all.