Prior research reported the oscillatory behavior characterized by long period and high amplitude during high gravity continuous ethanol fermentations at the dilution rate of 0.027 h?1. In this paper, high gravity continuous ethanol fermentations using Saccharomyces cerevisia at different dilution rates were carried out. Similar oscillations were observed when the dilution rate was switched to 0.04 h?1. Both oscillatory and steady processes can be achieved at dilution rates of 0.027 or 0.04 h?1, which depends on the initial status of the fermentation system. However, compared to steady process at the same dilution rate of 0.04 h?1, the average residual sugar concentration was lowered by 14.8% for the oscillatory process, while the average ethanol concentration and productivity were increased by 12.6% and 12.3%, respectively. Further investigation revealed that besides the lag time, oscillatory processes were different from steady ones in kinetics because a higher specific growth rate can be achieved at the same residual sugar and ethanol concentrations (increased by 53.8% in average).