Prolonged and hyperactive fermentation?

[SoopirV900]

Hi gang,
I brewed an AG batch of my Stone IPA clone (slowly refining it), 5 gal. I've also started a yeast bank by culturing from a smack pack and streaking on slants. This last batch was the first time I grew up a starter from a slant; I went incrementally- 40mL to 4oz to 12oz to 500mL so as not to stress the critters. The slant was clean (just milky white, glossy streaks), and after innoculating the 40mL of previously prepared sterile wort, the slant remnants smelled just like yeast should.
The starters went quick- 1.040 or so, made from DME. Within about 36 hours of each stage fermentation slowed and the solution was encouragingly cloudy (each sat on my stir plate for the whole process). I pitched to the next size up with fresh sterile wort in a sanitized flask...very uneventful.
I brewed, I pitched, I waited. 12 hours later I had vigorous blow-off. 24 hours later, it was still a pretty steady stream of foam and trub. Wednesday (4 days of primary) i noticed that my blow-off hose (normally I remove and replace with airlock after 2-3 days) was green inside from expelled hops, and was still bubbling like crazy.
I'm nervous- I've never had such a virgorous and prolonged blow-off in primary...should I be worried that somewhere along the elaborate (and beginner's) path of scaling up from a slant that something got in?
All I know about contaminents is that they tend to cause long, slow fermentation...
btw- primary is a 7gal plastic bucket with an omega seal lid (screw on)...I collected 6 gallons of wort from the BK; a bit more than I usually collect, so that's probably not helping.

Sorry, hope it's not tl;dr...

 

[Calder]

Sounds like a healthy fermentation to me. Once you get vigorous fermentation, nothing else stands a chance. OK, I'm over exaggerating there, but generally if you get the yeast off to a good start, it prevents other organisms getting established.

Either use FermCap next time or have less volume in the fermenter.

 

[Mateo]

I think most people are not use to optimal yeast conditions. Its really a craps shoot pitching a smack pack or a dormant vial of yeast. Once you learn to farm yeast like you are doing you will discover what works best under your conditions and you should document these so they you can continuously reproduce them.

My cultured yeast is at high krausen in a few hours on the stir plate where as a vial from the LHBS might take more than 12 hours to get there.

Fermentation is similar.

 

[Revvy]

I think most people are not use to optimal yeast conditions. Its really a craps shoot pitching a smack pack or a dormant vial of yeast. Once you learn to farm yeast like you are doing you will discover what works best under your conditions and you should document these so they you can continuously reproduce them.

My cultured yeast is at high krausen in a few hours on the stir plate where as a vial from the LHBS might take more than 12 hours to get there.

Fermentation is similar.

'

I agree totally, I don't think I really appreciated that until I brewed my Barlewine last month, with a 3/4 gallon starter made with 2 tubes of cali ale yeast and fed for nearly a week.

I blew the lid and it rocked and rolled for nearly a week.







Healthy fermentation is the bomb......literally.

 

[SoopirV900]

Thanks for the reassurances! I'm prepping to go into secondary (6.5gal glass), and I think my imagination/paranoia is still driving though- it didn't smell like beer to me when I sniffed the airlock (was finally able to switch from blow-off to airlock this morning). I smelled sour milk (lactobacter!!) but my wife smelled pickles (acetobacter!!)...I was ready to write my finding off as paranoia, but my wife knows nothing about brewing. It's still bubbling every 3-4 seconds, so I may be rushing secondary...but it's like having a sick child- you don't want to wait to see if it blows over (and yes, in either case (sick kid or funky brew) there's nothing you can do)!!

So reviewing my posted analogy gave me a think- if kids are sick with bacterial infection we give antibiotics...since yeast isn't bacteria, could we give sick fermentation antibiotics?? Wouldn't fix wild yeast contamination, but it might clean up bacterials!!

 

[0110x011]

I wouldn't worry about how it smells right now. There's a lot of funky chemicals that the yeast scrub out at the tail end of the fermentation cycle (diacetyl, acetobacter, excess oxygen), so how it smells isn't really a good representation of how it will smell/taste once it finishes out. Because of that, I wouldn't be in a rush to get it into secondary; you want to leave it on the cake until it's done to maximize that scrubbing effect. Just wait a few more days and you'll be fine.

 

[SoopirV900]

By this morning the fermenter was only bubbling once every minute or so, so I steeled myself and racked to secondary- you guys were right!! The funky odor was not present when I opened primary, just good ole fermentin' beer smell. I guess I was just more sensitive to it given the newness of slanting for me. Thanks again for the words of encouragement!