Fermentis W-34/70 - Is this yeast always this fast?

[FVillatoro]

Hola friends,
This Saturday I brewed my first lager! A schwarzbier that I put together.
My OG was 1.048, and I calculated for a FG of 1.008 with 83% attenuation.

I pitched 2 rehydrated packs at 57 degrees, and let it freely rise to 59 (the high end of the ideal fermentation range for this yeast).

Next morning, approximately 27 hours later, I saw active fermentation already - did not expect that as I've read some people say it can have up to a 48 hour lag...
I turned the temp down to 55 and let it chug sway.
The next day, it was fermenting vigorously at 55 degrees... Great!

Today I took a sample, and I'm already at 1.009 gravity! Wow that was fast! I started to ramp up the temperature slowly for a D rest.

The sample tastes amazingly clean and crisp with almost no esters (compared to the British strains), although not much sweetness since the yeast devoured quite a bit of sugars... But this was expected.

Hopefully it doesn't go too much past my expected gravity, but I'm surprised that it finished as fast as an ale yeast in the high 60s.

Has anyone experienced this before? Hopefully I can keg next weekend and pitch it into a Vienna Lager.

Gracias!

 

[jlvgolf]

Yeah it's a quick yeast. I'm using it for an Oktoberfest currently and it had kicked off after 4 hours and is currently 2 days in and nearly 50% done at 53 degrees.

 

[FVillatoro]

Yeah it's a quick yeast. I'm using it for an Oktoberfest currently and it had kicked off after 4 hours and is currently 2 days in and nearly 50% done at 53 degrees.

Nice! What is your OG and expected FG?

 

[FVillatoro]

This afternoon (after 4 days of fermentation), there are no more audible bubbles - it's like it just dropped dead! haha
Hopefully FG has been reached and now I stepped up the temp to 66 to keep D-Resting it and blowing off any sulfur that may have formed.

This yeast is great!

 

[jlvgolf]

Started at 1.054, looks like it just finished today (P+4) at 1.014ish which is 73% apparent attenuation which is pretty much in-line with what I would have expected for this beer.

 

[FVillatoro]

Started at 1.054, looks like it just finished today (P+4) at 1.014ish which is 73% apparent attenuation which is pretty much in-line with what I would have expected for this beer.

How high did you mash for that FG? Or do you have a good amount of crystal malts?

Thanks

 

[casualbrewer]

Started at 1.054, looks like it just finished today (P+4) at 1.014ish which is 73% apparent attenuation which is pretty much in-line with what I would have expected for this beer.

I'm betting it isn't finished. I always got closer to 80 percent attenuation.

 

[jlvgolf]

154. May have another point or two in there, but I'm not too worried about it. It's a fair amount of Munich and German Pils, so I wouldn't expect it to be super dry.

 

[FVillatoro]

I kegged it yesterday, but I got very poor attenuation at 69% apparent attenuation on this yeast, which was pitched at the ideal range in nutrient rich and oxygen stone infused wort (my usual proceedure).

My schwarzbier ended up at 1.046OG to 1.014FG @ 4.22% alcohol.

This is the first time that I have ever had a yeast under-attenuate below it's rating, and i've even used WLP002 several times.

One of the 2 packs that I pitched was very old and probably had very low viability - the other pack was fresher.

Couldn't have been the yeast stalling because it fermented at 55-57 (the middle of the ideal fermentation range for this yeast strain).

Well, i'll consider this bad yeast.

I will be re-pitching it into a Vienna lager later on tonight, so viability should no longer be an issue.

How strange!