Is there something wrong with my Trippel...?

[PhilOssiferzStone]

A week ago I dumped the wort containing nine pounds of DME and a vial of WLP500, White Labs' Trappist Ale Yeast, into a sterilized 5-gallon bucket. For two days, there was no visible activity. The third morning I was greeted by the clinging remnants of a 1.5" thick layer of foam that had risen and fallen during the night.... but still not a whisper of activity in the airlock.

The morning after *that* I went out and the airlock was bubbling merrily away as though attached to a miniature steam kettle. That evening, nothing. Since then, nothing. Which puzzled me.

An hour ago I decided to see what White Labs had wrought, and poured a sip out of the tap. What I swallowed was this gritty, grainy, muddy, medicine-ey stuff that made me think I'd just lost the whole batch. Wonderful. But I wanted to make sure, so I fished out a clear glass goblet and poured it full.

About a FULL FREAKING TABLESPOON of muddy crap settled in the bottom of the goblet. The remainder was still opaque, though a nice amber color. Cautiously I sipped. There's definitely a good amount of alcohol in there -- it warms my belly as I speak, or type -- and the first two mouthfuls still tasted strange to me, but were a good deal more palatable. I dumped the sediment and went back inside no more wise.

My questions are several-fold:

1) Is WLP-500 noted for this sort of explosive on-again/off-again activity? I've used WL's Belgian Wit yeast with great success before, and it stayed steadily active for a couple weeks.

2) Does WLP-500 generate an amazing amount of sediment in a brief while? Or is that just a characteristic of high-gravity beers -- more yeast food equals more yeast, uh, crap?

3) I *do* want to rack this brew onto secondary, I'm assuming. Will it clear out, at all? Will the taste continue to evolve? Is a week simply not enough for this variety of yeast with that amount of food to digest?

 

[Zen_Brew]

OK. Several things here. There are plenty of threads about not using airlock activity as a guide for fermentation. It is super easy to not have a perfect seal around your bucket lid and never see bubble one from the airlock. Air escaping around the bucket seal is no cause for alarm and won't harm your beer.

I have used WLP 550, which is a similiar yeast. There is nothing particularly unusual about how it ferments. It is a bit agressive at first, and can throw some fruity esters while it works, but nothing extremely out of the ordinary.

The fact that you have on again off again activity in your airlock makes me think possibly you have pushed on or re-adjusted your lid, or you are having large temperature swings in your wort.

If you are playing around with the lid, don't worry about it. The big ring of krausen was plenty sign that you had a healthy fermentation going on. If it is possible that you are getting a big swing in temperature in the space where the fermentation bucket is, you need to try to keep it at a consistent temperature for the whole fermentation or you could see swings in fermentation activity. Big temp swings are not the ideal for fermentation and can produce off flavors and incompletely attenuated beers.

You should not be sampling from the bottom of the fermenter. What you are getting is cold break, hop sediment, and flocculated yeast. It won't harm you, it just won't taste very pleasant, and yes a higher alcohol beer will cause more yeast production, so you will get more yeast sediment.

When you are ready to sample the beer the best way to do so is with a sanitized wine thief. If you are unsure what that is http://www.rebelbrewer.com/shoppingcart/products/Wine-Thief-%2d-Plastic.html. A beer, particularly a high alcohol beer, that is one week old is not ready to sample. The yeast are still hard at work eating sugars and cleaning up byproducts from fermentation. The beer will have some off flavors and hot alcohol at best after a week.

Give the beer another week at a constant temperature. Then take your samples for final gravity and taste your sample.

Cheers

 

[PhilOssiferzStone]

Shall do. Thanks.

 

[devilishprune]

My advice? Leave it alone.

Leave it for 3 more weeks somewhere and bottle/keg it. Drinking from the dregs isn't going to do anything for the flavor of a big beer that's one week old.