Fermentation behavior: Wyeast 1056 vs. White Labs WLP001?

[C38368]

Having started brewing in Oregon, I've always used Wyeast yeast since moving to liquid cultures, and 1056 is my IPA go-to yeast. I've recently started experimenting with hops profiles, using a simple base malt profile, of twelve pounds of US two-row. Pretty straightforward.

Until now, all have been with Wyeast 1056, and all have fermented out and hit terminal gravity within a week. More specifically, primary fermentation seems to last 72-96 hours, and I'm at FG in about six days.

My last batch, however, used WLP001, as my LHBS was out of 1056. No big deal; this is a recipe to play with hops, and everyone says that American and Chico are basically the same, anyway.

That was eight days ago. And it's still actively fermenting (as of now, one "blurp" every four to six seconds, I would say).

Is this normal? The only other obvious variable (besides infection?) that I can come up with, is improvements in my ability to regulate fermentation temperature. The past few batches have been at about 76-78°F on the stick-on; this last batch I was able to get down to about 74°F. Not a huge difference, but what do I know?

Any thoughts? I'm not terribly worried, I've just never had this much activity for this long before. Especially on a beer whose measured OG was only 1.054!

Cheers!

 

[jdauria]

Take a gravity reading two days in a row and see if there is any change. Most likely it's just CO2 venting through the airlock at this point. At those high temps, even at 74F, fermentation probably completed within a few days and it's just off gassing now.

Only other difference I see is that with 1056 I assume you are smacking the pack, which gives the yeast a little head start as it eats the nutrients inside the bag, where 001 being pitched directly doesn't have that head start. But really, only gravity readings will give you a definite answer.

 

[C38368]

I always use a starter, so smack-pack versus vial is pretty much moot.

What I can't figure out, is why there is still gas venting from the carboy, over a week after the fact. As I meant to get across, my experience with 1056 has been that all activity subsides within five days. Yet with this batch, something is still producing CO2 in sufficient quantities to bubble out of a blowoff tube, despite having had the stopper out twice in the last three days.

(As for the seven-day batches with 1056, they've all dropped to sub-1.010 FG readings within that time, so I seriously doubt that I've been leaving an awful low of fermentable sugars behind. But, then again, maybe so?)

 

[iosete]

Is normal in this yeast, in my last batch the airlock stop it activity at the 12 day.
In the 3 start days the yeast has produce the most activity, the others days the airloks works like you say ,until 4 secons.

 

[iosete]

The attenuation was the 80 percent
OG1062
FG 1012

 

[thornton33]

Anyone have issues with tons of large yeast rafts sitting in suspension with US 05? When I racked to the bottling bucket you could see debris from the top to the bottom in various amounts. Is that a typical characteristic of the strain? 2 weeks in primary and 1 week in secondary at 60°-64° entire time.

 

[thornton33]

Also OG of 1.07 and FG of 1.015.