Lot of sediment early in fermentation, normal?

Greetings! I apologize for my first post being a beginner question, but I'm hoping you all will forgive me.

My buddy and I had made a deal that as soon as one of us had a garage, we would get into homebrewing. I just moved into a place with a garage and we wasted no time getting to work.

I had been reading The Complete Joy of Homebrewing and we decided to start with the beginner recipe. We hit the local homebrew store and picked up two cans of Muntons Malt Extract Hopped Amber and a package of Safale s-04 Dry Ale Yeast (pdf).

Everything seemed to have gone well - we boiled the extract and water for 45 minutes then added it to chilled water in the carboy and topped it off to the 5-gal line. We started fairly late in the evening (didn't know how long this would take... one of many lessons learned) so we ended up soaking it in a tub of cold water to help bring the temperature down so we could pitch the yeast. Once the temp was between 70-75 we dumped the yeast in and mixed it by spinning the carboy. At this point we set it in my closet with the hose attached to the top and went to bed to dream of our first batch.

I came down this morning to see what (if any) activity had taken place. There is a thin row of bubbles along the top of the beer - nothing like the crazy amount shown in the book (I'm not worried about this, it's only been 9 hours since adding yeast). The concern I do have is the rather large amount of sediment already having formed at the bottom - the beer actually appears to have three distinct levels of darkness. We didn't filter the wort as it was a syrup to begin with and we hadn't added anything. I've included a picture below (sorry it's sideways - I think the forum is doing that) and would love some feedback as to if this is normal. I'm not worried about pitching it yet (unless you all say otherwise) - but I'd definitely like to know what I may have done wrong to correct in future batches.

Thanks so much!

There are no "abnormal" fermentations. All fermentations tend to be different, and are often ugly. It doesn't really matter one bit what it looks like. You have fermentation and that's all that matters, so relax.

You are fine and as Revvy says - no two fermentation's are the same -

My only worry is the horizontal nature of your carboy and the fact that the sediment is forming on the side and the the more traditional bottom.

Looks perfectly normal to me too. Like Revvy said, all fermentations are different. It will settle out and clear nicely in a few weeks. I usually pitch my yeast, check my fermentor until I see active fermentation and then don't look at it again for 2-3 weeks.

Thanks Revvy, we weren't panicked, just curious why it looked that way.

Grinder, the attachment uploading tool rotated the image and I haven't figured out how to rotate it back. The carboy is vertical and the sediment is horizontal across the bottom.

I've put a piece of tape at the bubble line just to track it for my own edification. If it doesn't start really kicking out bubbles by tomorrow, I'm going to switch to the airlock.

Thanks again for the responses!

I brew pretty similarly to you, I just use a sieve to strain out the hops. I pretty much get as much or more sediment as you see in your carboy, so no worries. when fermentation really gets going it'll a get stirred up again, then settle out when is starts to slow down.

I came back from working in the theater for a few hours to find my yeast had taken insult to my question and was blowing the top off the carboy. Those little guys are kicking serious butt!

Cannot wait to taste this batch! Thanks to all who replied!

Grinder12000 said:

You are fine and as Revvy says - no two fermentation's are the same -

My only worry is the horizontal nature of your carboy and the fact that the sediment is forming on the side and the the more traditional bottom.

Click to expand...

That's awesome. Made my day (apparently I have a rather pathetic existence where mildy amusing internet comments make my day, but whatever...).