Yesterday

3.25 gallon batch
O G: 1.042
F G: don’t know yet
3 lbs Bavarian wheat dme
.75 oz willammette hops at 6%
1 pack K-97

Had a weird fermentation. Pitched yeast at 4:30 pm and 66f and  saw a very small hint of foam at 8 pm. The next morning at 7 I saw about 1/8 inch of foam and no airlock activity. At noon the airlock was burping faster than once a second and the foam was over 1 inch thick. At 8 pm the foam had fallen and no more airlock activity.

Have you taken another gravity reading? It would be interesting to see how far it went in 24 hours. That’s a lot of yeast for 3.25 gallons of sub 1.050 ale, but it would still be astonishing if it completely fermented out in 24 hours.

Was there a large fluctuation in temperature that might account for the fall?  That was a quick turn, for sure.  I brewed an Octoberfest Sunday and it pretty much finished by this morning (Thursday).  Temperature went up to 58F at high krausen and is now back to ambient (in a fridge) 52F.  I pitched a slurry from a prior batch of Vienna after racking that beer (one week from brewing).  I have no experience with K-97, however.  Sounds like a beast.

Not yet, I’m going to leave it alone for a week or so before taking a reading.

Not much of a fluctuation, but it did get a bit warm: 73-75ish which probably accounts for the quickness.
The last time I used K-97 it took almost three days and the time before that almost five days. Both those batches were at lower temperatures.

I have never tried K-97 yeast and I have a pack that I need to use. Maybe make a Kolsch or a Altbier with this yeast.

k-97 and WB-06 are misunderstood and underused yeasts. i used k-97 and i thoroughly enjoyed it.

i made an amarillo/el dorado/ekg pale ale with it and i found that it expressed hops very well and kept a haze for a long time. it could honestly be used for a hazy IPA i think.

I would have pitched more …13 grams. [emoji2369]

I was happy with the alt I brewed with it.

That is my primary fermentation size for 3-gallon batches and an 11g package of dry ale yeast handles beers in the sixties well.  Fermentation starts as fast as two 11g packages in a 5.25-gallon fermentation.  The reality is that there is no significant difference between 11g and 13g in terms of time to maximum cell density.  It is fraction of a replication period. There is no real difference in lag time until we double our pitching rate.