Wow... Long... long .... long fermentation...

Ok this is a first, I've seen personally. 14 day's in Primary now, 1.07+ OG Belgian Ale with WYeast 1338.

I took a Gravity reading after 8 day's at 1.035... now another 6 day's and it's only down to 1.018... Lots of yeast still in suspension (wort).

It hasn't gotten infected and I can start to taste the alcohol over the sweetness now with the 2nd gravity reading.

I've kept this in a temp range of 66-70 deg F. Recipe says 68-70 so not far off but the recipe also indicates 5-10 days in fermenter...

So for future ref for myself, should I expect this long of a fermentation with WYeast 1338? Or should it have gone faster?

Guess I'm thinking I've just not managed to give the yeasties the "Right' conditions to do their best work.

It should be good beer from the samples though. I'm hopeing that it's not still green come new years.... Fingers crossed this finishes up in the next week, so I can go to 2ndary next week and then to keg by the 2nd week of Dec... if I slide further in this schedule... I think I'm Hozed...

The yeast will work as fast as the yeast will work, and no faster. Nothing wrong with a long primary.

no i think your problem is a low panic thresh hold. we are all guilty of it from time to time. nothing is wrong the fermentation just took longer.

" I think I'm Hozed..."

I don't. Looks like you have a good fermentation going on there...... cheers

Sounds normal. I would swirl the fermenter abit and warm it (if possible) to the low 70's. This will give the yeast a nudge to finish cleaning up their mess. Then give it more time in the primary for the yeast to fully flocculate and the beer to clear (Possibly another 10-14 days) then go straight to the keg.

How big was your starter? A 1.070 beer needs a lot of yeast to get going.

I did make a starter from the smack pack, but it's in another post.

Overnight ferment on 1.010 wort which I pitched the smack pack. Just to get it going. Lots of fermentation going on in the growler, I'd say there was about 1 cup of yesties on the bottom that I stirred up back into solution before pitching.

I'm going to leave it until turkey day and then rack to 2ndary as I still have to dry hop this one per recipe.

On another note, how long should I dry hop this one? The recipe isn't clear on that aspect... Should I judge just by the clarity in the 2ndary? then rack to Keg?

thanks for all the support and help!!! Love this site!

yeah I have a Weizenbock that has been going for 2 weeks and is still bubbling every 20 seconds....I haven't taken a gravity reading yet....

Well the Krausen fell and I decided to rack to 2ndary at 1.014. Added Dry hop Shaz and then added some Cascade just because I found it in the freezer...


Hopefully the hops will drop out of suspension at some point in 2ndary... Time will tell.

Cheeers

I hope it's finished at 1.014 - seems like it could be but we'd have to see the recipe and some more info.

The only reason I bring this up is because I racked a barleywine to secondary for dry hopping, only to have fermentation ramp back up again. It made me feel like I was losing all that delicious dry hopping to the bubbling.

The recipe indicates FG of 1.012 but as I overshot the OG by 1.002 I figured it would be ok as the ABV calculation is 7.7 which is over the Recipe calculation by 0.2.

As I've added extra hops, and I'm ramping down the temp now to 62. So hopefully the yeast falls out of solution.

If it stops here it's close enough for me.

My Apfelwein is still bubbling... been over a month now

I used 1338 on my Dead Guy Clone. After five weeks, I still had suspended yeast visibly moving around and my kreusen lasted over three weeks. I accidentally mashed around 160 for the first 25 minutes, which I'm sure had a lot to do with it. I went from 1058 to 1020. Not the greatest attenuation but it tasted great when I racked to the secondary.

I used the standard 1 litre starter on my stirplate.

This is a good thread since my fermenting brew is a Dubbel w/ white labs trappist. Do the veils of yeast work just as long to ferment????

White Labs Trappist (WPL500) is nothing like Wyeast 1338. The equivalent would be Wyeast 1214.

It took 5 weeks for my premium bitter to clear up in primary using 1968 ESB yeast with a starting gravity of 1.045. I was worried as hell that the yeast had been stressed since I had never had a primary fermentation take this long. This beer is turning out to be my best beer ever. Everybody I've read who used this yeast said it fermented out pretty quickly, but I'm on my third beer with it using starters every time, and mine take 3 times longer to finish. I guess sometimes it just takes longer. Belgian yeasts are very tolerant to alcohol, but are notoriously slow. Don't worry about it.