Color and FG puzzle

[Tamale]

Evening all.

Short and sweet, I brewed a 2.5 Gal boil in a 5 gal batch into a bucket.from bucket aerated wort into 2 identical 2.5 Gal fermenters and pitched yeast. Fast forward to bottling day and I notice the colors between the 2 are vastly different. and the FG on the right one is 1.009 and the left one is between1.001/1.002 . Both were fermented next to each other In same room for sam amount of time...
What are possible causes.. and
Should I syphon both into 5 gal bucket with priming sugar and bottle combined, or separately..?
thx in advance .
love the site. Keep on instilling confidence in us noob brewers.
wouldnt be brewing W/O yous
Guys being around. Cheers

 

[day_trippr]

Have you smelled/tasted a sample from each and compared them?
I'd be inclined to prime and bottle the half batches separately, just on the assumption that whatever has caused the two halves to be so different wrt FG might not be benign...

Cheers!

 

[Tamale]

Have you smelled/tasted a sample from each and compared them?
I'd be inclined to prime and bottle the half batches separately, just on the assumption that whatever has caused the two halves to be so different wrt FG might not be benign...

Cheers!

Yes should stated that. That was one of the things I did.. both smelled and tasted like I would expect them to... also this was the first time tryin this recipe too

 

[FatDragon]

So you did a half-volume boil and then split the wort into two fermenters? I assume that means you topped off with water. Did you top off in the kettle or the fermenters? If you did so in the kettle or bucket, maybe you didn't mix the wort well so your two fermenters ended up with different OGs. If you topped off in the fermenters, maybe you added more wort to one and, again, ended up with different OGs.

That would not entirely account for the difference in apparent attenuation, but it would account for the color difference as well as partially accounting for the attenuation difference. An infection is, of course, a possibility. If they both taste fine, maybe the lower one got infected with a strain of diastaticus yeast. That might also account for the color difference, as an infected batch might still be on the tail end of fermentation, and actively fermenting beer is usually lighter in color as a result of yeast in suspension.

 

[bobeer]

I once brewed 10 gallons of a blonde ale I do just about every summer. I separated them into 2 five gallon carboys and pitched each beer from one big starter I made a day before. The beers came out just as you described. One was nice and clear and the other was cloudy with a slightly higher final gravity. Both tasted pretty much the same minus a tad of sweetness from the higher FG batch. Both fermented at the same temp, right next to each other. To this day I have no idea why they looked different. I just have to assume that maybe some trub from the kettle got more into a fermentor than the other. My friend got rid of the 10 gallon setup right after this batch so I didn't get to experiment any further.