What kind of "brown" is good in krausen?

I know I am not the first one to ask about the krausen - is it good and normal or not. What I see now in my carboy is quite different from what I had a few months ago with EXACTLY the same ingredients and technique. Absolutely no change in anything, but instead of a uniform nearly white color, half of the krausen is covered with a dark brown scum. And yes, it was an extract brew (7 lbs of amber LME, whole Cascade hops, US05 dry ale yeast). I hope nothing wrong is going on here, but why would it be so different?

Hard to tell ... I could see that being normal ... every ferment is different. I'd let it finish out then taste.

BTW, did you etch those markings on your carboy? Very nice!

dutchoven said:

BTW, did you etch those markings on your carboy? Very nice!

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I used a Dremel with a small round diamond bit, just wrote the digits as I would have done with a pen. As you can see, I also added the date and place when I bought this carboy. Who knows - maybe it will become a piece of history some day

If there is one thing I've learned is two brews are never the same. I have never had the same krausen granted I've only brewed three brews so far so take my advice as what it's worth. Looks safe to me, if it smells good and taste good, I'd say your golden.

WortIfied said:

If there is one thing I've learned is two brews are never the same. I have never had the same krausen granted I've only brewed three brews so far so take my advice as what it's worth. Looks safe to me, if it smells good and taste good, I'd say your golden.

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Well, I cannot say how it tastes, as it is too early to try (only 36 hours so far), but it smells good. And steadily bubbles every second.

Looks good from here. I use buckets now, cause I caught myself looking for problems that might happen. Very nice amber color you got there. Cheers

Normal, no problem at all. Can't tell you why it doesn't always do it, but I get this too.

BOBrob said:

Looks good from here. I use buckets now, cause I caught myself looking for problems that might happen. Very nice amber color you got there. Cheers

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Thank you! The strange thing is that last time the color was much lighter. I start thinking - could it be that this time the guy in the store sold to me dark LME instead of amber? Or the other way around, when I asked for some amber extract the first time, I was given a can of an extra pale? All the barrels in the store are marked, but I was not looking closely. Anyway, this extract was definitely darker, and so was the wort.

LOL so how is this exactly the same beer then? It looking great.

I had a American rye ale look almost Identical to that it's been in primary for 2 weeks now so I can't really tell you how it's going to turn out but I saw it as normal.

Looks good to me. I also like the "Victoria's Secret" beer thong!

All browns, or greens or yellows or whatever are NORMAL.....The ONLY thing EVER to worry about in how something looks is if there is a skin on top of the beer- Not whether a krauzen is light or dark, or big or small, or whatever it may look like, or even what something smells like in the beginning. Fermentation is ugly and stinky, when it is perfectly normal, so worrying about how something looks is a waste of energy.

If you start with the premise that it is really hard to ruin your beer, then even if something looks ugly, you can just relax, and go "everything's normal."

It's from the hops and it tastes harshly bitter. It is thrown away when top cropping. The next layer is the best yeast if your going to repitch.

Nothing abnormal in that pic. I pitched the US05 2 weeks ago and have the EXACT same look to my krausen. Took an FG reading yesterday and drank ALL of the sample. Your fine!

frazier said:

Looks good to me. I also like the "Victoria's Secret" beer thong!

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I know, I know, it looks wrong - but hey, that was the only thing that I could find around at that time I need to get a wider elastic band at some crafts store.

Your just seeing the beginnings of what this brown stuff which will cake on the side of the carboy with a mud crud ring. I see this often,sometimes i think its excess yeast and i may have over pitched but that is just the way it seems.It will probably just cake to the sides and then youll have brown floatie bits on top, seems nottingham does this more.Then again so do the other yeasts. Id only worry if you have a skin,or fuzzy stuff, or some bizzar brett patterns.Even then your brew can still be managable, I bottled with a skin thought maybe it was my s-33 or t-58 that i tried for the first time,they tured out fine.

What temp do you have it? And-- you need a brew belt in TX???? Or is that just a for the thermometer?

jonmohno said:

What temp do you have it? And-- you need a brew belt in TX???? Or is that just a for the thermometer?

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Yes, it's just a band to hold two sensors (thermostat and thermometer). I keep it at about 66-67F.