Second batch, worried about gusher infection

[Hopelesst]

We're a little over a week into primary for our second batch, Revvy's Kentucky Common. We did stove top all grain BiaB, and our efficiency was pretty low. We used wyeast 1056 and fermented on the cool side, 63-64. Well at least that's how it started out.

Our ac brok. This happened with our first batch too, but this one was at least protected by the basement's ambient temp. On the fourth day the airlock was still bubbling rhythmically, and the reno started to crawl up about a degree each day. The bubbling continued until last night. After a full week the temp had reached 69 and the bubbling has reduced to about 1 bloop every two minutes.

Should my beer have been bubbling for this long? I hope that the ramping temp just kept the yeast active, but I'm concerned that I might have gotten some wild yeast. I've been trying to relax and just let this happen but I'm starting to fret. I don't wanna pop the lid and expose it to my basement air just for a hunch, so I was going you fine people could weigh in.

Thanks!

 

[homebrewdad]

Bubbling means nothing. Five days is very normal. I'm still new at this, and I've already had one bubble off and on for better than two weeks.

If fermentation was going well, you sanitized well, and you didn't do a lot of opening/shutting your container, you probably have no wild yeast. With a high temp, you might get some fruity esters - but probably not too many if 69 is as high as it got.

You can get fusel alcohols from high temps (taste ranges from "warm alcohol" to "rocket fuel"), but again, at 69, you are probably safe.

Relax, let the beer age. You'll be fine.

 

[stratslinger]

+1... Nothing to worry about here. Bubbling could be due to nothing more than the rising temperature. Remember, fermentation makes CO2. Some of that CO2 does actually stay in solution in the beer, and if the beer gets warm(er), the CO2 tends to bubble up out of solution.

So long as your sanitation was good, you've got nothing to fear. Let it ride out and continue to sit on that yeast cake!

 

[Hopelesst]

That's what I was hoping to hear!

As to the Fusel alcohols I'm not worried. We had plenty of those in our first batch, but the ac broke the night that we brewed and our poor wort sat full of english ale yeast at 78 for a week. This batch started out at the low end of the temp tolerance for a much cleaner yeast and never got warm enough to leave the comfort zone. My optimist side likes to think that slowly ramping up my temp actually kept my yeast healthier and happier.

Thanks for the encouragement to be patient. That is a difficult virtue for me to embody. Guess I'll check things out in another 2 weeks.

 

[BrewinHooligan]

I always start fermentation at the low end of the yeasts temp range and ramp up to around 70 towards the end to make sure the yeast doesn't get lazy and clean up after themselves. You should have absolutely zero worries with what you did, the gusher bug is usually caught in bottles or bottling equipment due to poor sanitation at the time of bottling.