Fermenting Again?

I have a red ale that I thought was ready for the secondary. It was bubbling every 3-4 min until about 4 days ago when the krusenen built up and it started bubbling every min, more than a few times. This has been in the primary since 7-25. Got any ideas what's going on with this 2nd fermenting stage ?

You have a beer that's been in the primary for three weeks and its still active? A red ale should have been done in a week.

That said, it doesn't really matter since you're not talking about bottling. Go ahead and take it to secondary and watch activity while its there (I assume the Krausen has fallen).

One possibility, probably not likely, is that the temps dropped wherever you had the primary stored and this caused fermentation to slow down; temps then rose again and it got moving. Could this be a possibility? Wouldn't expect that to be the case given the weather we've had, but that's one thing with the potential (I think) to cause that kind of activity.

Ive had fermentation start up again from a slight temp increase like the_bird said

Probably temperature. I like to warm mine up towards the end of the ferment & give it a couple days at 72F.

Strong argument from your experience here in favor of taking hydrometer readings to ensure fermentation is complete. You could have been looking at some serious bottle-bombs if you had already bottled.

I just did a pale ale that fermented for 4 weeks. I left it on primary for 3 weeks moved it to secondary for 1 week. When I was racking it over to my bottleing bucket it was still rollin and goin even though it was only bubbling about every 10 mins. So I let it sit for another day in the bottling bucket and that did the job.

Could some of this be related to the beer out-gassing? That is, CO is suspended and any agitation or warming causes it to be released?

I wonder if this has happened of if it could happend due to a wild strain of yeast entering the wort/beer? - Anyone know how long Lambics take (naturally - without a manual intro to yeast)?

I never though of raising the temp up to a room temperature to finish things off. I like that idea - almost like Mash out.

I am definately going to try it out. That is again why this site ROCKS :rockin:
- WW

No tempature rise here in CA, in fact on the coast the fog lately has been in so I don't think thats a possibility. Also this beer has been in a blow off tube set up since day 1 so the possibility of wild yeast getting in is nill. I am going to dry hop this beer so that will give it another week to finish. Then bottle or keg not sure yet.