I think I broke my beer

I'm brewing a holiday beer from a kit. Following the instructions it stayed in the primary (ale pail bucket) for 3 weeks, then I was going to bottle it but it was very cloudy and tasted very (very) yeasty. So I racked it to a carboy, it's been in there for 3 days now. At first it was very cloudy, then it started to clear and I thought it was all good. Now it's cloudy again and there's a little bit of white stuff laying on top. Did I do something bad? Should I just let it sit for a few more days and see what happens?

This is what it looked like the first day, very cloudy:


Day 2, it looks like everything was starting to settle:


Today, it's back to being cloudy and the line between cloudy and not-so-cloudy is higher than it was yesterday:


I screwed up the first gravity reading so I don't know what it was after brewing but when I moved it to the carboy it was 1.010 - the instructions say the final gravity is supposed to be 1.011.

When you transferred it to the carboy, did you siphon it off the cake of yeast at the bottom of the primary bucket? or did you siphon your entire yeast cake into it?

It looks like you just siphoned your yeast cake in, which roused (woke up) the yeast, and fermentation started going again. That shouldn't hurt it, other than maybe making it slightly more alcoholic than intended.

Either that or you have a terrible infection, but that looks more like yeast activity to me.

TheMadKing said:

When you transferred it to the carboy, did you siphon it off the cake of yeast at the bottom of the primary bucket? or did you siphon your entire yeast cake into it?

It looks like you just siphoned your yeast cake in, which roused (woke up) the yeast, and fermentation started going again. That shouldn't hurt it, other than maybe making it slightly more alcoholic than intended.

Either that or you have a terrible infection, but that looks more like yeast activity to me.

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I tried to leave the yeast cake in the bucket, I held the bottom of the siphon a couple of inches above it until I had to lean the bucket over a little to get the rest of the wort out. But even then I tried not to get much of the yeast. But maybe I did?

Is there anything I can do with it at this point besides wait and see what happens?

mikelbeck said:

I tried to leave the yeast cake in the bucket, I held the bottom of the siphon a couple of inches above it until I had to lean the bucket over a little to get the rest of the wort out. But even then I tried not to get much of the yeast. But maybe I did?

Is there anything I can do with it at this point besides wait and see what happens?

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hmm. What color was it when you siphoned it? was it cloudy like the first picture?

If so, you just have a crapload of yeast in suspension and you just need to wait for it to flocculate or you can get it cold and that will speed things up.

What yeast did you use?

TheMadKing said:

hmm. What color was it when you siphoned it? was it cloudy like the first picture?

If so, you just have a crapload of yeast in suspension and you just need to wait for it to flocculate or you can get it cold and that will speed things up.

What yeast did you use?

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It was pretty much the same color as it is in the first picture, and it was cloudy in the bucket too. The yeast was Safale US-05.

How cold should I get it? I can move it out to the garage where it's around 40 degrees.

mikelbeck said:

It was pretty much the same color as it is now and it was cloudy in the bucket too. The yeast was Safale US-05.

How cold should I get it? I can move it out to the garage where it's around 40 degrees.

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40 would work perfectly. Just leave it out there for about 3 days and it should clear right up and you'll be ready for bottling pretty soon after that.

TheMadKing said:

40 would work perfectly. Just leave it out there for about 3 days and it should clear right up and you'll be ready for bottling pretty soon after that.

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Cool! Thanks, much appreciated. I'll report back in a few days and let you know how it went.

mikelbeck said:

Cool! Thanks, much appreciated. I'll report back in a few days and let you know how it went.

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It's been sitting the garage for 3 days now, it's a little warmer than I thought -just about 50 degrees. But it hasn't cleared much:



Any suggestions?

Leave it alone till it clears and bottle it.

oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer said:

Leave it alone till it clears and bottle it.

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So you think it will clear eventually, I just need to wait it out? How long should that take?

oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer said:

Leave it alone till it clears and bottle it.

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I agree, it will clear eventually. It could take a few days or it could take a couple weeks. The fact that it hasn't changed when you cooled it down for 3 days is suspicious to me though. It makes me think you have some kind of density stratification going on. Maybe extra proteins or something.

If it doesn't settle in 2 weeks, I would try using gelatin to get it to drop.

add 1 tsp of unflavored plain gelatin to 2/3 cup cold water. Heat it in the microwave in bursts of 15 seconds stirring between bursts until it is 150F and the gelatin is dissolved. Don't heat it over ~170F. Then pour it hot directly into your beer and give the whole carboy a gentle swirl but don't stir it. Then let it sit somewhere cold for another few days.

US-05 can be a pretty poor flocculator when left to its own devices. Hit it with gelatin

OK. I'm going to leave it where it is for 2 weeks and will just ignore it and not stress about it. If it's still cloudy after that I'll give the gelatin a shot.

mikelbeck said:

OK. I'm going to leave it where it is for 2 weeks and will just ignore it and not stress about it. If it's still cloudy after that I'll give the gelatin a shot.

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doing the gelatin sooner certainly won't hurt it. I use it frequently in my beers. It just depends on how patient you are feeling ipe:

Be sure to keep it out of sunlight and fluorescent light while it's sitting there in your garage.

The garage doors is closed almost all the time, when it's open the carboy is in an area that doesn't get sunlight.

I'm OK waiting for another week or two (at the most) and then will try the gelatin.

There are a couple of things you can do at this point. #1 is just more time, just leave it alone for longer and it will eventually clear up. #2 is adding gelatin to it. This is a more advanced step and if you're new to brewing you may want to avoid it at this stage of your learning. It is fairly easy to do but you run the risk of contaminating the beer if your sanitation isn't up to snuff. Basically you take unflavored gelatin, add it to 1/2 a cup of water heated to 145F to 150F, stir it in until the water is clear and pour the contents into the beer. Leave it in the carboy for 24 to 48 hours and then bottle.

One thing to keep in mind is that your beer doesn't need to be clear to bottle. As long as your gravity has been stable over 3 days or so, it is done and it is ready to bottle. The beer will further clear in the bottles as it carbs up.

I think I'm in good shape now! The beer has cleared, it's a little hard to see in this picture but all the stuff that was floating around in it has settled down to the bottom in inch or so of the carboy. I'm going to leave it sitting out the garage until this weekend when I'll have time to bottle it. Oh and BTW I didn't do anything to it, I just let it sit out in the cold garage in the dark since last week.



Thanks everybody for the help. And sorry for panicking!

mikelbeck said:

I think I'm in good shape now! The beer has cleared, it's a little hard to see in this picture but all the stuff that was floating around in it has settled down to the bottom in inch or so of the carboy. I'm going to leave it sitting out the garage until this weekend when I'll have time to bottle it. Oh and BTW I didn't do anything to it, I just let it sit out in the cold garage in the dark since last week.



Thanks everybody for the help. And sorry for panicking!

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Good to hear. I assume you're naturally carbing in the bottle? If so, would not recommend dropping gelatin in it. You'll need those little buggers for your carbonation.

I normally keg but bottle when I feel like punishing myself. I use gelatin on all my beers and have never had any issue with bottle carbing afterwards.

I wish I had better luck than you. When I used to only bottle and used gelatin I always had issues with weak carbonation... But. At the same time I never a patient person.

Yes, I'll be bottle carbing.

I'm guessing the geletin kills off the yeast?

It doesn't kill the yeast, it causes the yeast to floc out faster. The entire idea behind gelatin is to clear up the beer, a lot of the haze in homebrew will be yeast in suspension. When you add gelatin you cause that yeast to drop to the bottom of the carboy and tend to rack much less into bottles. You need some yeast in the bottles in order to carbonate, so in theory you do run the risk of low to no carbonation when using gelatin and bottle conditioning.

In my experience that isn't the case, I've never had an issue. As with pretty much anything in homebrewing your results may vary.

Unless you have a brewery-class filter, there will be plenty of yeast still in suspension to carb your beer, even after using gelatin.

Agreed, there's plenty of yeast after gelatin

slym2none said:

Unless you have a brewery-class filter, there will be plenty of yeast still in suspension to carb your beer, even after using gelatin.

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This.

I just wanted to report back on this. The beer turned out to be quite tasty, many of my friends and family said it's the best I've made so far. One guy even came back a few days later and asked if I had any more.

Thanks very much for the help with this. Next time this happens (if it does) I won't be so quick to panic.