US-05 yeast characteristics

[jefferym09]

I helped my friend brew his first ale the other day and we used US-05 dry yeast as specified on the recipe. iv'e personally never used dry yeast before, just Wyeast and white labs. He told me it was doing pretty well after day one in a blow off tube, but this morning it has already slowed down to roughly 30 seconds in between burps and the Krausen only rose about a quarter inch. its only been 3 days since we brewed and this seems abnormal to me. i'm thinking we may have a had an unhealthy strain of yeast, either that or it fermented incredibly fast in one night. but i could be wrong since ive never used US-05 before, any thoughts before i tell him to buy another pack and pitch it?

of course i told him to take a gravity reading before doing anything else...

 

[Hammy71]

Sounds normal for 05 to me. I use it on proably 80% of my beers (pale ales/IPA's). I just brewed a beer on Saturday, by Tuesday fermentation was pretty much done. Let it sit in the primary for a few more weeks and it will clear up nicely.

 

[BeerGrylls]

Seconded. US-05 has the tendency to finish pretty quickly, but just because the krausen drops and it stops off-gassing so much doesn't mean it's done.

I'm a huge fan of this yeast in american beers, because it's very flavor neutral as long as you ferment in the correct temperature range.

 

[duboman]

Also ask him what temperature he is fermenting at, if it was too warm the yeast will work quickly but honestly everything seems pretty normal to me