How long is too long to see CO2 bubbling from the air lock?

Ingredients
1

Hey,

First timer. I made my first batch last Saturday evening. The recipe I used was for a Black IPA. The Alcohol content is said to be at 6.8 percent.

Sunday morning I noticed that the yeast (white labs) was already working. I was getting about a bubble every second and a half. I’ve checked the temp in the room and it’s been steady between 68-70 degrees each day. It is Thursday morning and its still going strong with the bubbling.

I was under the assumption that it would have stopped around 72 hours or so. Is this a problem?

2

You are fine.  Every yeast behaves different. Give it time.

3

It also matters how much head space you have in the fermenter, and what the pitch rate was, how Oxygenated the wort is, yeast nutrients etc.  All kinds of factors will slow down conversion.

4

Fermentation will continue until there is no more fermentable sugars or until the yeast have hit maximum attenuation. Many variables can affect the speed with which either of these limits is reached. The yeast do not work on any timetable but their own.

5

Keep in mind that the temp you want is beer temp, not room temp.  That’s a pretty warm temp to be fermenting.  Bubbling really tells you very little.  You need to take a gravity reading to find out what’s going on.

6

Thank you to everyone for the help. I just bottled the first batch today and the little bit I tasted was surprisingly good. I was just hoping for “drinkable” but it was encouraging that it was actually pretty decent. Thanks again.

7

Rule of thumb:
After chilling the wort and the yeast starts doing it’s work, there is never such a thing as too long :slight_smile:

8

To the OP - welcome to the forum - really good stuff here…but when you referred to “seeing” the CO2, I thought you had something worked up to make the gas visible!  Remember to let the yeast tell you when they are done - there are all kinds of reasons that an airlock is active or not that don’t mean fermentation is or is not occurring.

9

I agree with the posts above. For an example, my most recent brew, which was relatively high gravity, I only saw one bubble but it dropped to 1.010 within 7 days.

10

I guess I speak for many UK brewers when I say relatively few of us use airlocks on primary, certainly not me.  Gravity is the only real guide, as Denny says.