Fermentation still going strong after a week and half

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neumann

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I've got a Belgian Wit sitting in primary that I brewed on the 17th. I pitched the yeast (White Labs WLP400) at about 2 pm and by that evening it had built up a nice krausen and the air lock was bubbling away. I was pretty proud of myself as that is the shortest lag time I've ever had :). But here it is more than a week and half later and the air lock is still bubbling. I haven't even opened it up to check the gravity because I figured if it's still bubbling, it can't be done. I've never had fermentation last more than a week so I'm a little concerned. I know I should relax, but I just thought I'd see what the board thinks...
 
My last two wits were like that, except I was using the Wyeast 3944 strain. It took a good two weeks for the bubbling to stop and the yeast to settle on the bottom.

I just let it finish up and settle down before taking readings.
 
OK, that was what I had planned on doing. The bubbling has definitely slowed down. Overall, I'm pretty excited about this batch. My first full boil; got the ingredients for pretty cheap; very little lag. All in all, I have high hopes :D.
 
The wit yeast always is slow. I use Wyeast 3944 and it usually takes 2 weeks. On my last batch I used a 1 L starter. Not sure if that helped or not, but it was done bubbling after 1.5 weeks and gravity was at the FG so I bottled at 2 weeks. But, the yeast still hadn't flocculated (there was a layer of yeast / krausen at the top) at the end of two weeks. I think you'd need to cold crash to get it to flocculate faster. I also generally rouse the yeast by tilting the carboy at about 1.5 weeks to make sure they finished their job.
Those are some frigging lazy yeast.
 
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