two beers acting strange in secondary

I have two beers in secondar, an ESB OG = 1.062 , 1.020 when I racked to secondary after a week. I also have an IPA OG = 1.065, 1.023 when I racked to secondary after a week. Both of these used an S-04, US-05 combo yeast starter.

They have been in secondary for two weeks and there still appears to be little yeast colonies on the surface and I am getting pretty constant airlock activity. I am wondering if this is just dissolved CO2 escaping and what I think are yeast colonies is just foam?

before I racked to secondary I measured 3 days straight of the same gravity in primary for each of these. They seemed to finish high to me..but I had a bad thermometer at the time so I think I may have mashed too high.

The bad thing is that I have both of these dry hopping. Conventional wisdom would tell me to just leave them in secondary for some extra time to finish completely and do their thing...I don't want grassy flavors though. Not sure what to do.

Don't worry about grassy flavors for the first month.

david_42 said:

Don't worry about grassy flavors for the first month.

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That is what i like to hear. I think I am going to give both of these bad boys a month on the dry hop in secondary at 66 degrees to finish up....the flavors will be nice and mellow by then as well.

permo said:

They have been in secondary for two weeks and there still appears to be little yeast colonies on the surface and I am getting pretty constant airlock activity. I am wondering if this is just dissolved CO2 escaping and what I think are yeast colonies is just foam?

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Yeast colonies on top of a beer are so common that they have the nickname "yeast rafts." They are bouyed to the surface due to rising co2 being released from the trub, not just due to fermentation, but also changes in temp or atmospheric temperature.

Very rarely is the surface of a beer totally free of something floating on it.

After this length of time I would believe that it is just off gassing from those situations rather than fermentation still happening.

Of course you could check for yourself with a hydro reading. But I'm going to bet everything is fine and ferm is complete after 3 weeks.

I will likely take a hydro reading tonight. I am not expecting a huge gravity change, but a few points down..into the teens would be a nice suprise..doubtfull though.

permo said:

That is what i like to hear. I think I am going to give both of these bad boys a month on the dry hop in secondary at 66 degrees to finish up....the flavors will be nice and mellow by then as well.

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I wouldn't dry hop for a month. That's where your grassy flavors come from. One to two weeks of dry hopping is the norm.

KayaBrew said:

I wouldn't dry hop for a month. That's where your grassy flavors come from. One to two weeks of dry hopping is the norm.

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+ 1,000, I do no more than 10-14 days.

Yeah, when I first started dry hopping I went for 2 weeks min and even that gave me some grassiness in the final beer. It especially became apparent after being in the bottle for several months as things started to drop out. The hops almost took on this metallic taste.

It seems like every time I hear about pro brewers dry hopping, they usually don't go longer than 14 days at "standard" temps. Cooling the beer down, however, seems to allow you to leave the hops in longer.

I dry hopped for 26 days once before bottling and there was a definite grassy flavor. I wouldn't go past 2 weeks.

The yeast gets stirred up sometimes when racking to the secondary. I wouldn't worry too much about it. I'm certain your beer is done fermenting.