Any benefits to using hopped krausen?
Not for carbonation but to contribute a fresh malt/hop smell and perhaps enhance flavor?
In other words does the Speise add spice?
Spiese means food, you are feeding the yeast. Edited to correct auto correct.
What you are proposing would help, but you only add about a liter or so. It would have to be really hoppy to boost the hop character in the whole batch.
Yes, feed the yeast with the food but add spice to the beer!?.. well that’s the idea anyway…
I’d probably try 20% of the batch volume (~1g of reserved wort), boil for 30 min with one or two hop additions @ times X and Y and add the krausen before the last couple points of gravity dropped.
Never know till ya try, I guess.
I don’t think you are going to get an enhanced malt/hop flavor from adding krausen. It is a great was to start a fermentation or help finish a stuck fermentation but the best ay to add hop flavor and aroma is simply to dry hop and it is best to do this after a majority of the yeast has dropped out. For one thing, hop resins tend to stick to the yeast so when the yeast drop out they tend to pull much of the aroma down with them.
As far as malt flavor goes I’m not sure why you wold think krausening would add malt flavor to a beer. It’s mostly yeast.
Agreed.
That is the conventional wisdom (also include carbonation) however, one could also top up a fermenting beer at the last couple points with the hopped krausen (actively fermenting beer (or even the Spiese, unfermented wort).
That is the conventional wisdom but I guess the purpose is to determine if anyone has tried this and noted a difference in the malt/hop aroma (possibly flavor).
What is mostly yeast? A gallon of wort boiled with hops and inoculated with yeast? I suppose it would depend on how much yeast is added to it.
I’m going to try this myself on a future beer, time permitting…
I’ll look forward to your results, but I admit I’m skeptical.
Last Thursday I took my shot at using this technique for the first time. I brewed on Sunday 3/20/16, so Thursday was 4 days into fermentation. Tonight I’m going to dry hop for a second time, for 4 days then cold crash and keg etc. I’m pretty excited to see how it turns out!
What exactly is the “hopped krausen” technique? Do you have a link? I can guess but would rather get the precise definition.
Thanks-
Yeah, I don’t understand this technique at all. When he said “hopped krausen” I guess I just thought he meant krausening from a hoppy beer. I’m still not sure what he is referring to.
I’m quite skeptical myself, however, skepticism is the raison d’etre of the experiment.
I’m not referring to dry hopping, but good luck with your second dry hop!
I made it up. It’s a product of me. I added the word “hopped” to krausen and voila a new brewing technique emerged that vanquished all fear and sorrow from the world of beer. I have no idea if this existed prior to my revelation but I’m sure somebody somewhere has done it. Hence this post to attract the attention of that lonely soul.
Essentially you reserve 1 gallon of first runnings, boiling it with hops for 20 - 30 minutes, to attain flavor and aroma, then you either inoculate this with yeast or add it directly to the main fermentation at a point when there are only a couple of gravity points left. Perhaps one could even carbonate their beer with it if the calculations were made correctly.
That’s the general gist of it anyway.
Is the infamous “he” better than the infamous “they”? Every now and then I’m summoned to the offices of the infamous “they”. It never turns out in their favor.
Maybe you should have started your post with “I have this idea.” The way your original post reads now, leads us to believe this is a common practice somewhere.
Your basic idea is to create a hop concentrated wort to blend with an existing beer that may be out of balance. The hopped batch could be fermented to completion and blended to taste for more controllable results. For it to work, I think you would need to add a large amount of hops. If not, your just diluting.
Many and various apologies for misleading you and then rest of the homebrewing world. 
I had thought this was practiced by German homebrewers the world over, giving their beer that extra something.
Not even a hop concentrated wort just a first runnings boiled with some hops, not necessarily a lot of hops, not necessarily a little of hops. Then added to a fermentation that’s almost finished. Fairly simplistic in practice but very powerful in aroma and flavor!? 
Hanging on to wort after boiling for a few days is an invitation to infection.
Overnight, not really a problem. The issue is that SOME microbes can make it into that wort after the boil. Pitching the yeast builds an environment that is hostile and they become outnumbered by the yeast. Leaving them without competition allows them to multiply if they are present. This is a low probability but non-zero risk.
“Normal” krausening is done using successive batches to achieve similar intent but without the risks of holding out unfermented wort. Otherwise, the differences are that both batches are (presumed) hopped identically, and you have the bigger added advantage that the new beer used to finish the old batch has vigorous, active yeast present. By contrast, your hopped krausen approach adds new complex fermentables to a batch which has yeast that have neared cycle completion. You may get extra byproducts such as increased diacetyl, DMS, or other off flavors/aromas associated with weak fermentation by giving them more work to do on complex sugars (as opposed to simple fruit sugars, or Candi sugar, or priming sugar for comparison purposes).
I’m not saying it can’t work. I’m just pointing out some of the potential issues.
Try it and compare it with normal krausening and letting a batch go to completion without adding anything. It would be a good experiment, I’d think.
My .02
I hear ya buddy. Thought of all those things and the inherent risk of death by botulism. Well, at least it’s not the plague.
There are similar if not the same techniques in “high gravity” brewing such as demonstrated by Chris Colby:
Then you haven’t been in the right offices.
I have done krausening many times. It does a wonderful job of removing diacetyl or (sometimes) a stalled fermentation. But I can pretty much assure you that you aren’t going to get some magical hop and malt flavor from this technique. Certainly is worth a shot though, look forward to hearing your perceptions.