Is this normal?

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121Gigawatts

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This is my first ever batch, and it's been in the primary for 4 weeks. I had heard that it was ok to skip racking to a secondary for this Irish red ale. I also heard somewhere that when rings are showing up like this, it's a bad sign. Well, I'm just looking for advice - wondering if I should bottle this or dump it. I used starsan for sanitation, but learned afterwards that my hard tap water probably rendered it ineffective. It was cloudy as could be almost instantly.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

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You have nothing to worry about. The ring of crud on the top is some trub (mix of solids in suspension) that got stuck to the glass with the krausen (big layer of foam and trub up top of your beer during fermentation) fell.

The rings on the way down are just solids and yeast falling out of suspension.

Totally normal, no worries
 
Also, cloudy Star San doesn't means it's not working. I have hard as well, though it's ideal to get some distilled water and make some Star San that you can keep for a while.

The only way to know for sure if Star San is ineffective, is to measure pH

A rep from 5 star talked about that, on a brewing network show they just did at NHC. Give it a listen, good stuff
 
Cloudy starsan is ok too. If you are in doubt, get some Ph stirps and test your diluted starsan that way.
 
Looks like Krausen and yeast to me. The top ring is the krausen, which is formed during the primary fermentation. That's just the leftover stuff from that event. I haven't seen so much of the side stuff before here, but I do sometimes get similar looking stuff from hops getting stuck to the side. Don't dump it, I'm sure it's fine.
 
You have nothing to worry about. The ring of crud on the top is some trub (mix of solids in suspension) that got stuck to the glass with the krausen (big layer of foam and trub up top of your beer during fermentation) fell.

The rings on the way down are just solids and yeast falling out of suspension.

Totally normal, no worries

Agreed!

Someone is giving you bad advise or you are misinterpreting things. That is totally normal.

Cloudy starsan is OK the PH needs to be below 3. If so it is good.
 
Yup everything is fine and normal. Almost all my brews have that ring in some form or another. If you filter out alot of the trub when you poured into your carboy the ring will not be as high. If you got a lot of trub in your fermentor then the ring will be bigger/taller. (atleast that is what I have noticed in my brews.)

Good job on letting it sit for 4 weeks. I let all my brews sit 3-5 weeks in the primary then bottle.
 
Thank You! I am relieved to know I'll be tasting some home brew pretty soon - and I'm going to listen to that brewing network show!
 
Yup, krausen. You'll have a ring like that of varying color and thickness on every brew, so get used to it - it's your friend!
 
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