Wyeast 1968 - jumping globs of yeast

[Reizoko]

Noob here. I'm brewing an ESB. It's my 7th batch overall and first using Wyeast 1968. It's a full boil extract recipe w/ OG of 1.059. Pitched a starter @ 70 degrees and have kept the temp constant. I had visible activity w/in 4 hours, and within 4 days was down to 1.013 -77% attenuation. So now I'm 7 days in, and am still seeing some activity at the bottom of the carboy that looks like small globs breaking off the cake and rising about 3-4 inches before falling back down. It looks like the link below, only at about 20% intensity:
Jumping Yeast - YouTube



What am I looking at? Is it still chugging along? Do I wait for all visible activity to stop before the recommended diacetyl rest?

What about dry hopping? I'd like to do it in primary then cold crash before bottling - any reason I should reconsider that plan? Should I hold off on dry hopping until the yeast stops jumping?

Thought and advice appreciated.

 

[Arrheinous]

Cool lava lamp.

I've had something like this happen before. It looks like the yeast is still active. The English yeasts are a bit chunky and thick at the bottom.

So if the beer is already at 70F why are you planning to do a diacetyl rest? Something like that would be needed if you were fermenting at low temperatures to minimize ester production and then wanted to let it warm up later so the yeast could finish cleaning up while still getting low/controlled yeast character.

If you want to dry hop, you're better off with waiting until the activity stops. Otherwise you risk blowing out hop aroma along with the CO2.

You can dry hop in primary. If you want to reuse your yeast then it might work out better for you to rack to secondary first so the extra hop matter doesn't end up in the harvested yeast. Your plan looks fine. Be careful though, I've dry hopped a few times before and it caused some of the CO2 caught in the beer to erupt out of the liquid - made quite a mess.

There's an awesome thread here on English yeasts and fermentations. I think the standard fermentation schedule they worked out was 65F and then 68F.

Give this one plenty of time and don't rush it. It's a rewarding style. You'll want to let it sit around longer than an American IPA to let the complexity of the malt come through with the yeast and hops.

 

[Thedutchtouch]

My guess is that it's bubbles of CO2 off gassing from the (still alive) yeast cake, and the bubbles are catching flocs and taking them for a ride. Now over that bottle back up with a towel or something to block the light.

This may not be the right way to do things, but since I don't bother with a secondary/brite tank for beers that ferment for under a month, I just dump the dry hops right in to the "primary" (only) fermenter. I wait until after high krausen/lower yeast activity, because it have been told that the bubbling CO2 can carry the hop aroma right out of the beer. Some people will dry hop right in the corny keg. I typically do it in fermenter and leave the hop trub behind when kegging, to protect against vegetal flavors should I not consume the beer within a few weeks. Short answer, yes, I'd wait a bit before tossing in the hops.

 

[Reizoko]

Thanks for the info and the thread suggestion. Wish I'd seen that thread before starting this batch!
I'll hold off for now on dry hopping. What you said about the CO2 blowing off the aroma makes sense, but I hadn't thought of that before.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Arrheinous]

If you want to get really down into it you can have hop oils carried off by CO2 and aeration just during the pour.

At least that's what some of the cask ale info I've been reading say. Definitely not something to obsess over though. And dry hopping will put plenty of that into the beer.

 

[Reizoko]

I took another gravity reading last night and it's still at 1.013, as it has been for the last 4 days.

It tasted good. A bit more fruity than I was hoping for. Next time I'll ferment cooler.

The yeasties are still jumping. I'm curious if this is normal behavior for this strain?

 

[Arrheinous]

Bubbling from the yeast/trub bed itself suggests the yeast is working at the bottom of the fermenter as well as the bulk of the beer.

There's a WLP podcast for WLP005 (similar to Wy1968) which says, IIRC or maybe this is backward, that English ale yeasts used to be top fermenting/cropping but have been cultured to be more bottom fermenting to aid in dumping the yeast in modern conical fermenters. Maybe this is why you have yeast activity specifically at the bottom of the fermenter due to this mix of traits.

English yeasts do a lot of weird stuff. My first batch of WLP005 looked like giant, monster chunks of cottage cheese floating around. Even lost half a gallon of beer because of all the muck. Generations after the first behaved a lot nicer.

I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[BreezyBrew]

Sounds like C02 off gassing to me. Cheers!