Is something wrong?

[kiwi4brew]

Greetings all. Thanks already and thanks in advance. I've been lurking around here since last spring and you guys have helped a great deal without any recognition from me.
I have brew #9 in the secondary.
It's a franken-IPA that is the first one to not go smoothly...
IG was 1.076 and I used a couple of packets of rehydrated dry yeast.
After 3 weeks of fermenting, gravity was still 1.026 and I suspected it wouldn't go any lower...to help it out, I moved it to a warmer part of the basement but there wasn't much change.
After 10 days in the secondary I removed the 'dry' hop bag and for the past several days have been lightly swirling once a day to see if I could spark some action.
Today I see a new foam head has developed and the airlock is bubbling.
Have I met with some success or does forming a foam head after 3 1/2 weeks mean something is wrong?

 

[hodge]

You absolutely need to take a hydrometer reading to know for sure. Any idea on what it's reading now?

 

[kiwi4brew]

Sorry for the delay - here we are a couple more weeks along and the brew is STILL in the secondary. Gravity reading has dropped to 1.017 and there is a fresh krausen ring about 1/2" up the side.
Tasted it the other night and it surprised me by being very "beerish" (that's a technical term)

Hope to bottle it up tomorrow.
I guess the lesson (again) is just to relax and let the yeast work...I've read you guys saying it enough times.

 

[RM-MN]

Sorry for the delay - here we are a couple more weeks along and the brew is STILL in the secondary. Gravity reading has dropped to 1.017 and there is a fresh krausen ring about 1/2" up the side.
Tasted it the other night and it surprised me by being very "beerish" (that's a technical term)

Hope to bottle it up tomorrow.
I guess the lesson (again) is just to relax and let the yeast work...I've read you guys saying it enough times.

If you have a krausen ring and the gravity is still dropping, don't bottle.

 

[kiwi4brew]

Thanks for that tip - I checked tonite and the gravity was down another couple of points to 1.015....
The airlock shows pretty good activity ????
I have it in the main part of the basement where the room temp varies from low 60s to 78F on a daily basis based on if the fireplace is running.
I'll move it back into the "deep basement" and see if the cooler temps will stop that action. Hopefully that's the right move though I'm still struggling with the idea that it was brewed back in 2013 and is still not in bottles

 

[QuercusMax]

You don't really want to "stop the action" - you want it to finish out before bottling, or it will "finish out" in the bottles, and they'll either (best case) gush or (worst case) explode.

Temperature swings like that will seriously stress the yeast, which is probably why it's taking so long. You need to figure out some way to keep the temperature more steady - filling a tub with water and then putting your bucket/carboy in that tub should help moderate the temperature swings.

 

[Bamsdealer]

definitely don't move it to a cool area to stop the fermentation. Keep it warm and let it finish. Give it a few days after you see the airlock stop and make sure the gravity isn't still dropping before you bottle