Does anyone have any experience with WLP500? I brewed a tripel 6 days ago, OG 1.084, pitched at 66F (from a yeast starter, decanted spent wort). Fermentation started about 12 hrs later at 67F, normal krausen and activity apparent. After 3 days at 67F I ramped it up to 69F for a day, followed by increasing to 71F yesterday. Airlock activity had slowed considerably yesterday. This morning when I went to increase to the final temp of 72F, it was bubbling actively again, about 1x every couple seconds. My question is, is this typical for this yeast strain? Or am I potentially looking at some sort of infection? I've never had an infection in the several years I've been brewing and nothing was different this time about my sanitation methods.
Sounds a little odd. How are you raising your temps? If you move your fermenting vessel they can start throwing some bubbles but will usualy slow back down fairly soon. I have used this yeast for a Triple and was very happy with the results. I fermented the whole time at 66 degrees and had the ester profile I was looking for. Good luck!
I have a chest freezer with a Johnson A419 controller hooked up. Haven't touched the fermenter at all. I'm hoping it's all just due to the rise in temperature, but I'm a little skeptical of that.
I can't speak to this particular yeast, but one thing to bear in mind: changing temperatures will affect the rate at which the beer releases C02. Sometimes when you raise the temp at the end of fermentation for a d-rest or whatever, you may get some unexpected bubbling that can be mistaken for a resumption of fermentation. As you know, the only way to know for sure what's going on is to take a reading, but my guess is you're just seeing some degassing.
