On my next hop-forward beer I want to try krausening, but after boiling the wort starter to sanitize I want to add some hops as sort of a mini-whirlpool before cooling and adding yeast to make the krausen starter. Anyone have experience with this? Think it will make a significant difference in the hop profile of the finished (bottled) beer?
Waidaminnit…I don’t think I’ve ever heard of kausening for priming. Priming with gyle, yes, but not krausening. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Links above for where I got the inspiration to try this. Adding a whirlpool was an idea I’ve thought to add to it.
Sounds like some extra work, but maybe worth the effort. I may have to try it when I am low on lagering chest space.
Thanks for the links. I was planning on krausening my lagers this winter. Spunding will be used to carbonate.
Yeah, this is the biggest thing. Planning ahead is a necessity:
Tonight I’ll thaw out the frozen ~1 gallon of gyle from the original beer, tomorrow I’ll boil it, cool, aerate (modified SNS) and pitch some yeast (shooting for 30 hours before I plan to bottle on Friday). Friday I’ll skim top layer on the krausen starter, take a hydrometer measurement and then use the calculator in one of the posts above to see how much of it I’ll need to get ~ 2.3 volumes. Not a ton of extra work (essentially making a starter, one extra hydrometer measurement, and some math) but the scheduling aspect might be a bit much to do on every beer. BUT, if it does yield a better product or even a longer lasting product, I think it’s worth the effort for bottlers.
This beer isn’t hoppy, so I’ll save my mini-whirlpool experiment for the next brew.
So I used the krausening method outlined above to bottle a Kentucky Common recently. In 6 days it was perfectly carbonated but did have just a touch of diacetyl that was not present in the finished beer. I am incredibly sensitive to diacetyl though (my wife couldn’t taste it) and a few days later it was gone. I may try krausening with a more flocculating, neutral and temp forgiving strain - maybe EC-1118 for ease of use.
As for the process, it really wasn’t much more work than before (the act of bottling itself takes way more time than the prep of the krausen) and I like the idea of having active fermentation scrubbing out my mistakes during packaging.
Next beer I’m going to try my whirlpool krausen experiment. 
Hmmm… in thinking about this - maybe dry wine yeast isn’t going to work? Does wine yeast work on beer wort sugars? I’ll just have to control the fermentation temp of my krausen starter better I suppose.