Bubbles starting after dry hopping.

[smokenjoke]

I have a Sam Adams ale clone in the primary. It has been there for 3 weeks with no apparent airlock activity for the last 5 days. Yesterday I added 1oz of hops and about an hour later the airlock started to bubble, about once every 45 seconds. After the hops broke apart I could see some particles float to the bottom and then some where floating back up like it was trying to ferment again. Is this normal?
No I didn't take a reading before I dry hopped. From the threads I've read I thought 3 weeks would be plenty to finish fermenting.
This morning the airlock had slowed to about once per minute.

 

[Revvy]

You opened it up and then close it...and you added nucleation points. More than likely you also nudge the fermenter while you put the lid back on.

Airlocks can start or stop or start and stop again, for a ton of other reasons, like temp changes, getting nudged by the cat or the vacuum cleaner, changes in barometric pressure.

All an airlock is is a valve, a vent to release excess gas...which it's doing now.

It means nothing.

 

[BradleyBrew]

the only way you can truly tell if it has finished is by taking a hydrometer reading... I have witnessed "new" airlock activity after dry hopping. I think most likely in my case it was just from moving the fermenter around and Co2 being released from suspension.

 

[dmbRedGetta]

Yep, it's normal. I'm doing a DFH 60 minute clone right now that finished at 1.018 after two weeks, so I dry-hopped. 8 days later, it had fallen to 1.015. On Monday night (which was fermentation day 25) it was at 1.012. My FG should have been 1.017 - 1.020, but I guess the yeast didn't get the message.

The important thing is to leave it alone and let it finish fermenting. Make sure you check it over the course of a few days so that you know the yeast aren't still working.

 

[badhabit]

In addition to the comments from Revvy, is not unusual to get some C02 production from the dry hops. This for me seems especially true if you are using whole hops. Ive actually had to put a blow off tube back on in secondary for a couple days when I added two oz dry hops to a batch in a 5 gal carboy with very little headroom.

 

[smokenjoke]

You opened it up and then close it...and you added nucleation points. More than likely you also nudge the fermenter while you put the lid back on.

Airlocks can start or stop or start and stop again, for a ton of other reasons, like temp changes, getting nudged by the cat or the vacuum cleaner, changes in barometric pressure.

All an airlock is is a valve, a vent to release excess gas...which it's doing now.

It means nothing.

Yes I probably did all of the above. Thanks for the information.
RDW can be a hard thing to do...HAHB is the easy though. I'll just ignore and let it do its thing.