German Brewing

I've yet to reach the fermentation portion of Kunze but I have read about the benefits of Krausening in Kai and Nico's blogs. That post about Ayinger adding yeast in 3 stages perked my ears up as well.

I'm curious:
1) Who here adds fresh Krausen?
2) How much do you add? (12-20%, so ~2l for 4 gallons in the keg?)
3) When do you add it? (I believe adding it during the transfer phase is ideal but it sounds like it's beneficial even post EVG during a cold lager?)
4) At what temperature do you add it? (As in, would adding fresh krausen to a beer lagering cold at 30-40f have as much benefit?)
5) What's the typical timeframe? If added towards the end of the lagering phase for 'clean-up' how long would you wait before pulling a pint?

I'm adding about 500-600ml of krausen to beers 16P and above when I transfer to spunden, but before I begin dropping the temperature to lager. I'm not adding it for the sugar, just the fresh, healthy, active yeast.

What is your process on making it? Would dme work? I have done it before but only when I was brewing Helles back to back every week.

Maybe its worth canning helles wort for future krausen batch?

Abbey - So no starter for a 12p helles, but you're adding fresh yeast direct to the keg upon transfer?

I used a DME starter once in an ale that had more Diacytel than I wanted. Added it to the serving keg and it cleaned it up great. But I imagine using the same wort would help preserve the beers character (especially if using 12-20%).

I was thinking about doing a mini-mash - Brewing up a 3l batch or so lodo style, cooling, pitching, then throw it in at high krausen in the lagering keg.

All beers get a starter going into primary. I krausen after primary as I'm transferring to spunden in a keg. For 11-14P beers I don't bother, but with bock and dopplebock I add more active yeast at the time of spunding. Usually, I have a helles going, so I just pull beer from that. I do have starter wort canned, but I haven't had to dip into that to make a fresh starter to add as krausen.

Good review

https://edelstoffquest.wordpress.com/20 ... ay-part-1/

The other main thing I'm thinking about is pitch rate. I currently have a quart of slurry in my fridge collected post-primary. Not sure how much of that to throw in a 2l batch or if a fresh vial of lab yeast would do better

The process I'm thinking on.. feel free to poke holes in it:

Perform a mini mash:
1) Bring just over 3qts of water to a boil for 5m
2) Chill down to 180f, add 0.28g SMS & 0.3g CaCl
3) Chill to 148f and Mash In with 1# of Pilsner Malt
4) Adjust pH to 5.4 with lactic acid (normally would use malt but don't trust LHBS to weigh out fractions of oz)
5) After 30m rest in 140s I'll rise to 160f for an hour, then 170f for 10m.
6) Lauter (BIAB) and bring to a gentle boil for an hour adding a gram of Magnum.
7) Chill down in an ice bath to 48f and pour into a erlenmeyer flask
8) Add some of my yeast slurry (amount TBD, 100ml maybe??) or a fresh packet of lab yeast (I've been using 833)
9) Give it a bit of 02 then place it in my chest freezer
10) When it reaches high krausen a couple days in dump the whole flask into my Helles keg (currently at EVG and 40f)

I'm confused. Is this keg Spunded as well? Or are you doing this instead of spunding?