Belgian Tripel still going... 8 months later!

[EyeHeartBeer]

OK, last summer on June 7th, i did my first partial mash, this kit here>>
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/carmelite-triple-grain-tripel-kit.html
and everything went very smoothly, hit 1082 for the OG pitched a large yeast starter, VERY active primary fermentation, racked to secondary a few weeks later (was working excessive OT at the time) but the beer tasted fine, it was around 1014 at the time i believe, so i knew it would probably drop lower to acheive the proper dry finish of a tripel, and i knew it would need to age for awhile so i stuck it in the basement (which stays right around 60-64 degrees) wrapped up and forgot about it for awhile, started checking on it around october when i PLANNED on bottling, and it was still actively fermenting, let it go awhile longer got through the holiday rush, yadda yadda, and now today, i decided to take a gravity sample because there was still a bit of foam on top of the beer, and bubbles in the s-lock, and when i spun the hydrometer into the sample, it fizzed as if it were carbonated from the secondary, had to wait for the bubbles to stop cascading until it finally came to a rest at 1010. and it tasted fantastic! so my big question is, is this normal? id really like to bottle this but wouldnt bottle bombs be a possibility? there doesnt appear to be any bacterial infection, no sour flavors, no pellicle on the surface, just a small ring of yeast residue from the fermenting that occured. i need some help here!

 

[Jayslay]

Hmm that's a little odd it's still bubbling. Even odder that you're still at 1010 it should be lower by now. What yeast did you pitch?

For the classic dryness of a tripel in my opinion you want it 1005 or lower.
At eight months most of your yeast has probably gone dormant or autolysed.

Maybe give it another feeding with sugar to re activate some yeast and drop your FG a bit.

Or you can keep waiting but that is getting excessive.


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[EyeHeartBeer]

It was the wyeast Belgian Ardennes


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[morticaixavier]

It's almost certainly done and has been for a while. it's not unusual for a little krausen to hang around on top. I use a fir amount of irish moss and I usually have a nice yeast mat on top of my beer even after cold crashing.

1.082 to 1.010 is 87% attenuation. pretty good. and as you say it tastes fantastic. bottle it. The airlock bubbles are likely caused by co2 coming out of suspension as temps change and/or relative air density changing inside and outside of the fermenter.

Also, a big part of why it has taken so long to finish was moving it to secondary before it was done. it's fine to move to secondary for a long ageing like this but what you are really doing is moving it to an ageing container. there should be no further fermentation going on. You are removing the beer from the vast majority of the yeast and undoing alot of the work you did with your starter.

 

[EyeHeartBeer]

gotcha, it was my first big Belgian beer so ill chalk it up as a learning experience thanks for the advice, it will now get bottled soon now that i have much less worry of bottle bombs

 

[morticaixavier]

gotcha, it was my first big Belgian beer so ill chalk it up as a learning experience thanks for the advice, it will now get bottled soon now that i have much less worry of bottle bombs

It's all about learning... wait, no, it's all about drinking while learning! (that doesn't seem right either hmmmm)