I'm just a tad confused...

I brewed a 10.5 gallon batch of my Tiny Bottom Pale Ale (with a few minor changes) 10 days ago, racking 5.25 gallons into 2 separate carboys then pitching yeast from the same exact starter. They both fermented as usual for the first 5 days or so, then things got weird. The carboy that received the first runnings of wort from the kettle, the one with quite a bit of cold break and hop matter, looked the most normal- after about 5 days, the krausen fell. The carboy that got the more clear wort (second runoff), the one I thought would be "better," looked good at first, then the krausen slowly faded and the airlock continues to bubble regularly (a couple times per minute). I just took FG samples. The "dirty" carboy was crystal clear with FG of 1.009, while the "clean" carboy was super hazy with FG of 1.013. I'm confused...

Clean on left, trub-y on right:

Did you make a single starter? Wondering if maybe it settled a little before you pitched and had a better cell count on the second one that received off the bottom of the flask. ???

Did you add oxygen to them?

Hello, you have 2 different beers, 1st runnings in one fermenter and 2nd runnings in the other, If I read your post correctly, they will ferment out differently with two different OG readings ?.

What you have done is the equivalent of a heavy (1st runnings), and a light (2nd runnings), the yeast alone won't make these beers the same, if you would have collected all the runnings together, then split them and added the same yeast to both, then they should be the same beer.

Please Let us know how they both come out, I have been considering doing this and would love to hear your results.

Cheers

EDIT, I reread your post several times, I see that its 1st and 2nd runnings out of you pot, its still the same printable as what I described above, but on a much lesser scale, heavy thick wort in the bottom of your pot, and lighter thinner wort in the top of the pot, unless you stirred and pored some wort from pot into each fermenter several times to make sure you had the same amount of solids/matter/thick wort, they will be slightly different beers.

Cheers Again

Unless I missed something the OP misused the 1st and 2nd running terminology. What happened was taking half of the boil and less debris into one carboy and the other half and more debris into the other.

I really don't know, maybe they somehow ended up with different amounts of unfermentables. And I am with you I would have expected the results to be opposite also.

I believe "runnings" referred to here was from BK not MT. "Should " be fully mixed and same OG..

501irishred said:

I believe "runnings" referred to here was from BK not MT. "Should " be fully mixed and same OG..

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That was how I read it.

My hypothesis is that the batch with the trub had a better fermentation because the yeast could strip the oxygen it needed. The second cleaner batch likely had less oxygen available and performed accordingly.

Yes I read it wrong, I did go back and add a EDIT to what I said.

It was Kinda weird, right after I did my edit, 4 post popped up lol

I also think that shivalotus has another good point.

Cheers

501irishred said:

Did you make a single starter? Wondering if maybe it settled a little before you pitched and had a better cell count on the second one that received off the bottom of the flask. ???

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A single starter split directly off the stir plate- I've done this many times with not problems.

shivalotus said:

My hypothesis is that the batch with the trub had a better fermentation because the yeast could strip the oxygen it needed. The second cleaner batch likely had less oxygen available and performed accordingly.

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Perhaps. Interesting theory!

I don't have time to find the link, but it's my understanding that cold break (trub), has natural yeast nutrients; hence a faster fermentation in the "dirty" wort.

WVbrewer said:

I don't have time to find the link, but it's my understanding that cold break (trub), has natural yeast nutrients; hence a faster fermentation in the "dirty" wort.

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I'm with you on this. I recall a little Basic Brewing Radio experiment where people basically did what I did (clean vs dirty) on purpose, and I believe their results were similar. Still, I'm shocked at how slow the "clean" beer is going... it still seems to be fermenting, albeit very slowly, but it's been 12 days already.

From this point forward, I'll use hop bags for my hoppier beers and not worry at all about waiting for the cold break and trub to settle prior to racking to carboys. Decision made

So are you doing any type of aeration?

shivalotus said:

So are you doing any type of aeration?

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Aeration or oxygenation? I use a plastic doohickey attached to a hose, works great... plus I pitch mad starters, so it doesn't really matter.