Yeast still active?

Hello. I started a Pilsner LME batch of beer 3 days ago. A few questions:

1. Is it normal for there to be a lot of sediment at the bottom of the carboy already? In previous batches, it took a while longer for that to happen.

2. When I added the yeast to the carboy, the wort probably wasnt as cool as it should have been, it was probably between about 77 degrees. The beer was bubbling like crazy for about 24 hours or less and now only bubbles every minute or so, if that. I know the bubbling is not a way to measure if it is done fermenting, however I would like to know how to know if my yeast didn't die out to soon? Usually I can see some bubbling action on the side of the carboy, like bubbles rising to the top, but cant now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Aaron

This sounds normal to me. When you pitch at a higher temp, the yeast go crazy right from the start. This isn't really good since they will get exhausted and settle out before they have a chance to eat some of the larger sugars in the beer. It will leave you with a sweeter than normal beer.

Chances are, your beer is fine and will taste great, it just may finish a little higher in gravity that you expected it to. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Ok thank you. The alcochol content will also be lower, correct? It only really bubbled for about 2 days. It looks like everything is pretty much dead now and its been almost 4 days total.

aaronc5150 said:

Ok thank you. The alcochol content will also be lower, correct? It only really bubbled for about 2 days. It looks like everything is pretty much dead now and its been almost 4 days total.

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a healthy ferment should be fast. airlock bubbles mean nothing, but if it's actually done, it was either a very healthy ferment or your temps were way high and it went quick. pitching at 77 would cause it to kick off faster than normal. what were your temps like during fermentation?

The room temp where it is fermenting probably is in the 66-70 range. I am not sure if its done or not, just doesnt look like any "activity" is going on. The beer is clearing up and theres a decent amount of sediment at the bottom.

I don't do lagers at all but my understanding is it has to be really low temp. So being such high temp the yeast could have been super super active and burned itself out. I just thought I would throw in my 2 cents.

You will probably have a ton of diacetyl and other off flavors from not pitching sufficient yeast cell counts cold and fermenting at 50.

Be ready to lager this for a long long time.