Where did all my crausen go?

This past Saturday I brewed an all grain recipe for a Dunkelwiezen. My brother-in-law helped me out as he is much more experienced than I am. He thought it would be good to use the fast pitch yeast starter so he threw it together and had it going to town on the stir plate while we brewed. All seemed well, the crausen started by the next morning and I was excited to see how it was going to progress. By late Sunday, the crausen went away and the beer just looks stagnant. The picture on the left is Sunday morning and the picture on the right I took now. To make my angst even worse, we also brewed an extract batch and that yeast is still going strong today and we didn’t use a starter on that one. Can I pitch some more yeast or should I just let it ride and see what happens?

A yeast in a starter should go faster than one without. What’s your fermentation temp?

Let it go as is. Looks like you had a very healthy fermentation. With some yeasts the krausen drops more rapidly than other yeasts. You have a great layer of new yeast at the bottom of your fermentor. Take a SG reading in about 5 days. Your fermentation may be close to finishing but give it plenty of time.

Looks fine you had krausen going on. Only way to know take a grav reading. And wait few days. Take a reading again. If the grav drops its still fermenting. But when the grav reading the same as before. Your fermenting might be done best thing do a taste sample. As well. I would wait at least 7 to 10 days. Before you bottle or move to secondary. Good luck

When the crausen was going well it got up to 78, but now it’s between 68-70.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it!

You may need to use something as simple as a swamp cooler to have more control of the fermentation temperature. 78°F is a little on the high side for most of the Dunkelweizen yeasts unless you are going for the banana esters. Just having the fermentor in a tub of water can moderate the temperature rise during the most active part of the fermentation.

At 78° it’s no surprise it’s done fermenting. Wheat yeasts are beasts at controlled temps, let alone at those increased temps.