Fermentation starting again?

ok .... hard to explain whats going on here....
brewed a wheat beer recipe and had a little bit of a stuck fermentation... i added another vial of yeast after making a starter. all went fine... FG came into where it should have.... bubbles stopped.

Transfered over to secondary ... beer starts clearing up... no bubbles....

after about a week i now am getting a bunch of bubbles again.... just leaving a small ring of "foam" around edge of carboy on the beer surface... but definitely bubbles again.

i guess my question is.... is this normal ? or is something else happening... i have heard that if it sits on the yeast too long it will autolyse (spelling?) its self? and if it is doing that does it produce bubbles?

any info would be appreciated

First, did you verify you had stuck fermentation with a gravity reading?

Second, did you check the gravity to be sure it was done before racking to secondary?

Bubbles in the airlock mean nothing, as stated many times on this site activity in the airlock means nothing, it is not a gauge of anything.

It is possible the additional yeast took a bit to take off and you now have some additional fermentation occurring because it wasn't done in the first place.

Gravity readings are the only way to verify fermentation activity

i did do gravity readings and it seemed to stop where the recipe says it should stop. i then transferred to secondary...
and had no bubbles for a week maybe a little more than a week.... ( having a hard time finding time to bottle... ) but now it seems to be bubbling again... not in the airlock so to speak... just i see bubbles in the beer... looks like a big glass of beer ... except its in a carboy... just odd that after a week of nothing its doing that again... i have never seen it do that before

Marcom1234 said:

i did do gravity readings and it seemed to stop where the recipe says it should stop. i then transferred to secondary...
and had no bubbles for a week maybe a little more than a week.... ( having a hard time finding time to bottle... ) but now it seems to be bubbling again... not in the airlock so to speak... just i see bubbles in the beer... looks like a big glass of beer ... except its in a carboy... just odd that after a week of nothing its doing that again... i have never seen it do that before

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If you did take a reading you should have taken them for 2-3 days and if there was no change then it was time to rack.

In addition, if it was where it was supposed to finish why did you think it was stuck and pitch more yeast: confused...,

It could be more fermentation or are you dry hopping? If so it could just be CO2 clinging to the hops as its released from suspension

Either way you need to give it some time, take readings to verify it is in fact done and then bottle

ok... no dry hopping....
stuck fermentation.... i was at 1.043 for about 5 days... give or take a .001
i pitched another batch of yeast and THEN it went down to where the recipe said it should stop. stayed there for two days and racked over to secondary.

a week goes by and no activity at all.

now yesterday i get bubbles... like a poured glass of beer in a glass ... just in a big carboy.

the question i have is ... after what im going to assume was a finished fermentation... and no activity after racking to secondary...... is it odd for it to start bubbling again. and if it is odd... what might this indicate.

Original gravity was 1.077 and Final gravity was 1.012 or 1.013 depending on who did the reading lol... me and the partner disagree on the final number... but thats a different story.

does any of this help?

Can you post a picture?

Sounds just like a little CO2 in solution in the carboy

here are a few pics...

this is after at least a week to a week and a half of NO activity at all

I think that either temperature change or atmospheric pressure changes can make co2 come out of solution. If your gravity is stable I would expect that release of excess co2 is what is happening.

ok ... so i'll take a gravity reading in a little bit... have a few things to do first...

i guess im not sure what this excess co2 is? never heard of it or experienced it before...

Thanks for the pictures, you have nothing to worry about. What you are seeing is the CO2 that was in suspension escaping. Maybe the carboy got jostled a bit or the temp changed.

If you watch it you will see the little bubbles rising up from the bottom, it's better than watching re-runs LOL!

ok cool.... the only other concern we had was should we bottle it with this going on? dont want any bursting bottles

Marcom1234 said:

ok ... so i'll take a gravity reading in a little bit... have a few things to do first...

i guess im not sure what this excess co2 is? never heard of it or experienced it before...

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Fermenting yeast creates CO2 as a by product, it is what causes your airlock to bubble or the reason you use a blow off tube. It is also what creates the carbonation in your beer. The minimal yeast left in suspension consumes the priming sugar and creates additional carbonation.

I would leave the beer in the Carboy for a few days and let the activity settle down and then rack to a bottling bucket and bottle.

If you want you can read up on bottling by looking at the stickie in the bottling forum-tips for bottling, it's a great run down on what to do and how to do it!

i understand the process of the co2 .... and how it carbonates... i just dont know how or why it was not there for over a week then now it appears.

Marcom1234 said:

i understand the process of the co2 .... and how it carbonates... i just dont know how or why it was not there for over a week then now it appears.

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Cool, sometimes s#%*t just happens, maybe it got bumped, maybe the temp changed, who knows

ok i'll accept that