Extremely Fast Fermentation?

So, I brewed my beer 2 nights ago and pitched the yeast at 10PM that night. In the morning, there were no signs of fermentation at all, but a very large amount of trub in the bottom. I vigorously shook the carboy, and when I got home from work, there was 1/2" of krausen and the airlock was going nuts.

Today, the fermentation still looked extremely strong, but I noticed the krausen started to recede. This evening, the airlock is going much slower, maybe a bubble every 15-20 seconds, and the krausen is almost all gone, dropped to the bottom.

This isn't normal, compared to the last 4 brews I've done, so I'm kind of sitting here doing the ?????

There still seems to be quite a bit of activity inside the carboy with the yeast swirling about, but the fact that the krausen has dropped and the airlock is slowly down considerably are all signs of fermentation being almost complete.

Some veterans want to help me out here?

Yeast is California V Ale Yeast from White Labs.

I did mash kind of high for my partial mash, but that was 2 lbs of grain... I had 5 lbs of LME. SG was 1.047.

Thanks

Its normal you just havent experienced it fast yet ive done six and ive had almost half of them ferment in about 3 days.Yeast do what they want. What temp did you pitch-ferment temp.Full moon? ha. Is it? Dont know but my first brew i was told a full moon increases higher yeast activity. Not sayin i know this as a fact, but was just a thought.

jonmohno said:

Its normal you just havent experienced it fast yet ive done six and ive had almost half of them ferment in about 3 days.Yeast do what they want. What temp did you pitch-ferment temp.Full moon? ha. Is it? Dont know but my first brew i was told a full moon increases higher yeast activity. Not sayin i know this as a fact, but was just a thought.

Click to expand...

LOL yeah it was a full moon actually.

Wow maybe it is true then.thats awesome. May the legacy of my first brew which i named " Full moon" live on (in my world anyway) cheers!

They do go fast sometimes, the best bet is to let them sit for a while even though....

Use a hydrometer and not bubbles though to tell when it's done.

D0ug said:

They do go fast sometimes, the best bet is to let them sit for a while even though....

Use a hydrometer and not bubbles though to tell when it's done.

Click to expand...

True! I fell into that trap my first few brews of not knowing to let it sit.I seen too much is your hydro done yet? If it dosent drop in 3 consecutive days its done... and then no following of a " but dont bottle yet"

My last batch was done fermenting in three days, I bottled in seven, and started drinking them at day 14. It was a pretty low gravity beer coming in at 3.1 ABV so there wasn't as much work to be done. I pitched hydrated dry yeast which probably had a lot to do with it. I brewed a batch Wednesday night and pitched a two day/doubled yeast starter. It took off like a rocket by the next morning with the krausen coming up to the bottom of my air lock in a 6.5 gallon beer bucket. It started slowing down last night so I'll have to take a gravity reading to see how we are doing.

My previous batch got stuck at 1.020 even after three weeks. I racked it over to secondary and that was enough to push it down to 1.012 (6.1% ABV). Sometimes that extra "stir" gives them a push to wrap things up.