could all of this be trub?

recipe:
3L batch
400g light dme
400g dark crystal malt
18tsp cocoa powder
5g willamette (80mins)
3g mangrove jacks british ale yeast (rehydrated)

I scraped the sides of the demiohn with a sanitised spoon, thinking that it was just stuck to the sides, I think it goes the whole way through. I then put it in a cooler with some ice packs to cold crash. the trub level hasn't really changed. This is the first time that i've tried putting cocoa powder in a beer.

What do you mean by 400g dark crystal malt? Steeped malt or something?

The cocoa powder, yeast, and hops couldn't make a solid layer of trub that thick. Either that's liquid with suspended particles in it very slowly separating out, or you did something weird like boil malt grains and throw them in the fermenter.

My best guess, and it is only a guess, is that 18 tsp is a lot of cocoa (especially for a 3 liter batch), more than 1/3 cup. What may have happened is that your cocoa powder provided a bunch of starter particles for break material to glom onto instead of settling out, resulting in the cloud at the bottom of your fermenter. Perhaps as fermentation concludes, and the beer becomes less turbulent, the particles will compact more?

I guess it must be, especially with the cocoa powder. Not sure what else it would be. Did you use a hop bag for the pellets/leafs, or strain them after?

The dark crystal malt was steeped, I used a hop bag. Its been in the primary for 2 weeks. I haven't taken a hydrometer reading yet because I think that it would be a waste for such a small batch, I wouldn't like to pour the sample jar back in. This seems very strange to me because the trub in all my other beers compacted fully after a few days. Any suggestions for what to do next? I was planing to rack it off for bottling but it doesn't look like i'll get very much.

Crash-cool the hell out of that jug and hope that cloud of cocoa drops...

Cheers!

Just leave it, it looks no different than a pumpkin beer honestly that had pumpkin in the boil. Over a week or two it will compact down to an inch or two...

fuzzewuzze said:

just leave it, it looks no different than a pumpkin beer honestly that had pumpkin in the boil. Over a week or two it will compact down to an inch or two...

Click to expand...

+1