Trappist still fermenting.

I made a 5 gallon batch of trappist ale. OG 1.100, and its still fermenting after almost 2 weeks. Is this normal, or should I be concerned about contamination?

Depends on the current gravity, fermentation temperature, and yeast being used.

It's common for a Belgian strain to be able to ferment to 80%+ attenuation, especially if large amounts of sugar were used. And fermentation can be slow if temps are in the middle to low end of the yeasts range.

But, this begs the question, what is YOUR indicator of fermentation? Still seing bubbles in teh airlock? Krauesen? Or is the gravity actually still dropping lower and lower each day?

Only the last one is the real indicator. The rest could be off gassing or lots pf pesky proteins.

Are you really saying your airlock is bubbling, or have you taken a gravity reading? Visual cues can be deceiving. I have a wit beer that I pitched yeast over two weeks ago, that STILL has a 2" krausen on it. But on Saturday I took a grav reading and it had reached terminal gravity.

The only way to truly know what is going on in your fermenter is with your hydrometer. Like I said here in my blog, which I encourage you to read, Think evaluation before action you sure as HELL wouldn't want a doctor to start cutting on you unless he used the proper diagnostic instuments like x-rays first, right? You wouldn't want him to just take a look in your eyes briefly and say "I'm cutting into your chest first thing in the morning." You would want them to use the right diagnostic tools before the slice and dice, right? You'd cry malpractice, I would hope, if they didn't say they were sending you for an MRI and other things before going in....

Thinking about "doing anything" without taking a hydrometer reading is tantamount to the doctor deciding to cut you open without running any diagnostic tests....Taking one look at you and saying, "Yeah I'm going in." You would really want the doctor to use all means to properly diagnose what's going on. It's exactly the same thing when you try to go by visual "cues" alone.

When I switched to secondary after about a week, new krausen formed and the airlock is bubbling. Thanks for the info.

ivanfigs said:

When I switched to secondary after about a week, new krausen formed and the airlock is bubbling. Thanks for the info.

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Prolly shouda left it in the primary a tad longer.... Couple 3 weeks??

ivanfigs said:

When I switched to secondary after about a week, new krausen formed and the airlock is bubbling. Thanks for the info.

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Why does everybody do this!!!

maida7 said:

Why does everybody do this!!!

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Transfer to secondary too soon?

Yes, it comes up so much it's starting to bug me.

maida7 said:

Why does everybody do this!!!

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Just didn't know better. We were there once too.....

Sorry guys, I need a vacation.

I thought transfering to secondary was, in part, necessary to eliminate off flavors from being introduced from the trub. Two weeks sounds like a long time for it to sit on the break and spent yeast.

ivanfigs said:

I thought transfering to secondary was, in part, necessary to eliminate off flavors from being introduced from the trub. Two weeks sounds like a long time for it to sit on the break and spent yeast.

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There's been a big shift in brewing consciousness in the last few years where many of us believe that yeast is a good thing, and besides just fermenting the beer, that they are fastidious creatures who go back and clean up any by products created by themselves during fermentation, which may lead to off flavors.

Rather than the yeast being the cause of off flavors, it is now looked at by many of us, that they will if left alone actually remove those off flavors, and make for clearer and cleaner tasting beers.

You'll find that a great many folks, maybe even the majority on here these days, leave their beers in primary for 3-4 weeks, skipping secondary. Many of us even dry hop in primary, and only rack to secondary if we are adding oak or fruit, or had fruit in the boil or primary and left lots of trub behind.

Even John Palmer talks about this in How To Bew;

How To Brew said:

Leaving an ale beer in the primary fermentor for a total of 2-3 weeks (instead of just the one week most canned kits recommend), will provide time for the conditioning reactions and improve the beer. This extra time will also let more sediment settle out before bottling, resulting in a clearer beer and easier pouring. And, three weeks in the primary fermentor is usually not enough time for off-flavors to occur.

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And this;

John Palmer

As a final note on this subject, I should mention that by brewing with healthy yeast in a well-prepared wort, many experienced brewers, myself included, have been able to leave a beer in the primary fermenter for several months without any evidence of autolysis.

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People have left it as much as six months.

This is where the most up to date brewing wisdom and ideas can be found...In fact a lot of stuff has been started on here, and made it into byo or zymurgy or podcasts...in fact BYO DID a piece on no secondary/long primary, along with the BASIC BREWING PODCAST and even they said that there were no issues/harm with doing it and in some beers it did actually improve the flavor and clarity. And I believe that really WAS influenced by the discussion we have had for the last couple years on here.

After a month in primary your beer is crystal clear, very clean and crisp tasting. And when you rack to bottle you leave behind a really dense yeast/trub cake.

Believe me, after three years of doing the long primary/ no secondary I find no need to go back to doing it any other way. The quality of my beers has upped 10 ten fold.

As have my scores in contests.

If you got another krausen in secondary that means you racked too soon, and the yeast was still working...That's how people often end up with stuck fermentations, at the 1.020 or 1.030 mark, because they take the beer off the yeast before it's done fermenting.

And that's why things like the The 1-2-3 method is one of the silliest things out there, even sillier than going by airlock action. It Doesn't factor in the lag time that often happens to our yeast (as illustrated by the "Fermentation can take 72 hours...." thread. )

If you have a 3 day lag time while the yeast is reproducing, and then arbitrarily decide to rack your beer on the 7th day, you are racking with only 4 days or so of fermentation and more than likely racking way too soon.

You see many threads were new brewers who do that panic becausue suddenly they see this ugly growth on top of their beer after a couple days in secondary. That growth we end up telling them after they post a picture is a krausen and it's because it wasn't finished fermenting to begin with, and got kicked up agin by racking.

OR they post after a week or two in secondary that their beer is stuck somewhere between 1.030 and 1.020....and we tell them that happened because they again racked too soon. and left the yeast they needed to finish the beer behind....

Or they rack over when there is still even a krauzen on top.

So I don't believe in using the 1-2-3 method unless you are counting 1 on the day you actually see a krauzened formed on top of their beer.

In Mr Wizard's colum in BYO awhile back he made an interesting analogy about brewing and baking....He said that egg timers are all well and good in the baking process but they only provide a "rule of thumb" as to when something is ready...recipes, oven types, heck even atmospheric conditions, STILL have more bearing on when a cake is ready than the time it says it will be done in the cook book. You STILL have to stick a toothpick in the center and pull it out to see if truly the cake is ready.....otherwise you may end up with a raw cake....

Not too different from our beers....We can have a rough idea when our beer is ready (or use the 1-2-3 rule which, like I said, doesn't factor in things like yeast lag time or even ambient temp during fermentation and do things to our beer willy nilly, like moving it too early, or thinking our beer is going to be drinkable at 3 weeks....but unless we actually stick "our toothpick" (the hydrometer) in and let it tell us when the yeasties are finished...we too can "f" our beer up.

You can't really do something arbitrarily, you have to learn to "read" your beers, the hydrometer is the best way to do that.

And Patience is the best answer to everything.

All of this said, you could still have a small amount of fermentation going on for such a big beer with a Trappist yeast. Some of the Belgian yeasts are notoriously slow finishers. My last saison was almost 3 weeks before it stopped but it also attenuated over 80%.

But what thses guys have said has also been my experience and I NEVER use a secondary anymore for beer. I left that saison in the primary (plastic bucket!) for 4 months IIRC and it was very well received with no autolysis detected by anyone...

Thanks, I have a witbier in primary that I'll leave until it clears.