Yeast settling after 4 days in Fermenter?

As of right now I am not worried and don't believe my beer is ruined.

But i do have this question. I brewed an Oatmeal stout on Tuesday night. There began to be activity after about 12-18 hours and continued for another 24 hours atleast. But i checked it today after 4 days and noticed a lot of yeast on the bottom already. is this normal? I used White labs yeast and on my first brew (this is my second brew) I used a dry yeast and don't remember seeing all the yeast on the bottom so soon. I will take a hydrometer reading tomorrow.

Will also take a picture tomorrow and update this as to SHOW what I am seeing.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Also, RDWHAHB

Sounds perfectly normal. There is probably a bit of settled trub mixed in there as well. Take a gravity reading as well when you are taking that picture.

Yep, normal. I had an amber ale completely settle after only 72 hours. Scared the crap outa me!

depends on the temp fermented at, and how much trub was transferred. people freak out so much about stuck sparges and infections. use close to normal pitch rates and good sanitation, and you're good. had 1 stuck sparge early in my brewing, where i used 1 windsor on a 1.80 or so, and 1 infection, where i fell asleep for 3 hours while chilling. ruining a beer is very hard to do when you're careful

I bottled my English Stout last weekend. I had the same problem after about 5 days. It rolled a lot. It even came out of the air lock. But then it DIED. My final gravity was lower than expected. I wound up with a 4.5% stout.

I talked to a local brewer and he said that type of yeast was very flocculant but dropped very quickly. He suggested mixing in another type of yeast. I don't remember the name of it.

Thanks for the replies. I figured there was nothing to worry about.

It looks pretty white and very fine, so im assuming its yeast. I see some darker stuff underneath which would be trub. I took a gravity reading and it is 1.020@ 70. If im not mistaken, it is about the same as when i pitched.

Here is the picture


Proof of fermentation.

ryangsams said:

I took a gravity reading and it is 1.020@ 70. If im not mistaken, it is about the same as when i pitched.

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Wait...meaning your starting gravity was about 1.020 as well?

ColoHox said:

Wait...meaning your starting gravity was about 1.020 as well?

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yea, but i don't think i mixed the wort well after adding the topping water. So it was probably higher, but me messing up the wort mixing fudged up my readings.

If needed, i used Midwest brewing Oatmeal Stout extract kit.
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/oatmeal-stout.html

Being an extract kit...first of all it would have been difficult to take an OG anyway (thoroughly mixing is an issue), but it might be done at 1.020 (some just stop there). The easiest thing to do would be to let it sit for another week just to be safe, and let the yeast clean things up.

unionrdr said:

Settling out clear @ 1.020 after 4 days,I'd say it stalled. The pitch temp must've been high for it to stall out at 70F.

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If that was the case, there anything i can do?

unionrdr said:

Swirl up some yeast without splashing & cover it with something. Give it a day to get going again. It could knock off a couple more points.

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Nevermind, i re-read this and figured it out... I put my wine thief (after sanitizing and swirled it around a bit to get the yeast to move around back into suspension. I will wait and see what happens.

I checked gravity today and it lowered to about 1.018 now.

Going to be transferring to secondary tomorrow