Hops sitting on krausen.

[JohnRB]

I'm doing a Ritchies Festival kit which is dry hopped during fermentation.

The instructions are clear. 'Do not stir in the hops!'. So after 36 hours the pellets have broken up nicely but are sitting on top of the krausen.

Should I ignore the instructions and give it a stir or accept that Ritchies knows best? Advice appreciated.

[Fil]

I would expect the Kraussen to die down eventually, and then the hops will be brought down into contact with the wort. And when fully saturated pellet hops do tend to sink nicely..

perhaps its a feature of the kit letting the kraussen dose the beer with the hops when ready

If however when the kraussen has died down you find the hops sitting like an island floating on the surface you can try breaking the surface tension with a few sharp raps from the back of a wooden spoon at the liquid level on the FV exterior.

[BenB]

Good thinking Fil- you don't want to add the hops too early otherwise the yeast when it drops will drag down lots of hop flavour. By definition when the krausen collapses the majority of fermentation will have happened. Makes a lot of sense and if that's why they say that then it's really simple solution.

[Brewdoug]

At what time did you add the dry hops?
They should only be added for the last 4 days or so by which time the most active fermentation and the krausen has died down. If you add them too soon a lot of their aroma is driven away by the activity and CO2 of the fermentation.
In my experience when you add dry hops in pellet form they form their own sort of krausen or green scum which eventually does sink to the trub at the bottom of the fermenter.
As others have said the krausen will sink eventually bringing your dry hops in better contact with your beer. Not a good idea to interfere too much as you are increasing the risk of infection.

[JohnRB]

Thanks all for the thoughtful input.

I can control temperature fairly well and this brew has been fermented at 21Deg.C.

Ritchies instruction state that hops should be added after 5days but at that point I still had krausen coming through the airlock! I waited until fermentation had slowed and added the hop pellets on day 9. The krausen less dense but still 2cm thick.

Again Ritchies advised leavin g the hops in the FV for 5 days. Balancing the different views I'll wait until the krausen has subsided and then hold in a clean FV for the yeast to finish cleaning up. Do you think this makes sense?

Thanks.