Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale - Seems slow to finish

This is my first time using this yeast and I am brewing a Sweet Stout with it. I started it out at 65 degrees and once the krausen started to fall off I bumped it up to 70. I took a gravity reading after 1 week and I am 3 points away from 68% attenuation (the low end of the attenuation range for this yeast according to Wyeast's site). I decided to bump it up to 74 degrees (the high end of the recommended temp. range) and when looking at the surface of the beer through the carboy I can see little bubbles slowly rising to the top so it's definitely fermenting away it just seems like it's going to take it's time to eat up that last bit of sugar and reach my target final gravity.

Anybody else had a similar experience with this yeast? Wyeast's descriptions of their strains usually say whether or not it is slow to finish and their description of 1099 doesn't make any mention of it.

What was your OG? And your pitching rate? Lots will determine how fast the beer ferments. Give it a few more days and check gravity again.

I've pitched the hell out of this and finished fast and I've underpitched and finished slow. Both ways they finished by the 3 week mark I always wait. Although the underpitched had some off flavors. Hope that helps.

It can indeed be slow to finish sometimes. I use that yeast all the time for my stouts and porters.

But little bubbles does not mean fermentation - if you warmed the beer up it could just be CO2 coming out of solution. Just check the grav for a few days and you'll know where you stand.

acefaser said:

What was your OG? And your pitching rate? Lots will determine how fast the beer ferments. Give it a few more days and check gravity again.

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OG was 1.060. Pitched at the standard rate (per George Fix) for ales of 750,000 cells/ml/degree Plato which, for this beer, meant doing a 1.4 liter starter for 24 hours before pitching to get an estimated 209 billion cells.

@brrman - it's been at 74 degrees for a few days now so I think it's safe to say that the continuous bubbling is fermentation. I'll check the gravity again next weekend when I move it to secondary to find out for sure though.

I recently used the 1099 for the first time and had a similar experience. The recipe was BM's Aberdeen Brown (Newcastle clone) slightly modified. My FG came in at 1.016, a couple points higher than beersmith 2 anticipated and under the low end of the published attenuation range. It doesn't taste under-attenuated and I was looking for a very mellow version so I'm not bothered by it, but it did strike me as odd.