Well this sure don't look right

BrewSwag 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
ajmartinez

ajmartinez

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 26, 2009
Messages
86
Reaction score
1
Location
Houston, TX
Interesting "development" maybe someone here can identify. I moved my carboy from the closet to the counter with the intent of letting it sit for a few hours to settle down again before I kegged the brew, and this happened almost immediately:


*** by Anthony J. Martinez, on Flickr

The dark band up at the top? I've never seen that before. This was just 2-row and Vienna, hops, water, and yeast. No adjuncts or anything funny. No idea what's going on at all.
 
Dark part is clear; the light part has yeast in suspension. If you get it cold, the yeast will continue to come out of suspension and the line between the two colors will drop, and eventually the whole thing will look dark.
 
What kind of beer is this? Vienna and 2 row wouldn't make a beer as dark as that top ring.
 
Its a premade black and tan! No, really I have to agree, it is the yeast falling out of suspension.:rockin:
 
passedpawn said:
Dark part is clear; the light part has yeast in suspension. If you get it cold, the yeast will continue to come out of suspension and the line between the two colors will drop, and eventually the whole thing will look dark.
Click to expand...

To me clear implies non-opaque, and light is having one hell of a time penetrating the dark stratum. Before I moved it the whole beer was more like the middle stratum in color, and was clear enough to read a book through. I was actually pretty happy with how well it cleared.

TomOliver said:
What kind of beer is this? Vienna and 2 row wouldn't make a beer as dark as that top ring.
Click to expand...

Just a pale ale, it was all very much the same color and clear before I moved the carboy from the understairs interior closet where my fermentation takes place. I expected the disturbance to make the beer cloudy as the yeast on the bottom were jostled back into suspension, and a few hours time to cause them to fall out again so I could begin kegging. The black band at the top? Totally unexpected!

BrewForMe said:
Its a premade black and tan! No, really I have to agree, it is the yeast falling out of suspension.:rockin:
Click to expand...

Checking again this morning, nearly 24hrs after movement, and it still looks very much the same. :confused:

jgln said:
Infection...:cross:
Click to expand...

Could you elaborate please? I've never had an infected beer before, but they're apparently akin to crashing in the motorcycling world. Nobody wants one, few admit when they've had one, but if you do it long enough it will happen. While I did not monitor every moment of the fermentation process (a little busy with work and a partial differential equations course) I did check in fairly regularly and never saw anything unusual on or in the beer. That is, of course, until I moved the carboy from the closet to the kitchen counter.

I can't imagine that what's going on is at all right, because it's hard to fathom something with a grain bill consisting of only 2-row and Vienna (with the vast majority being 2-row) ever getting that dark. I'd just like to get "smarter" with regards to what's wrong. My only other thought on the matter is that I do use Iodophor, but if the iodine was going to react with any starches it would have done it when I racked to secondary and not a month later. I hit my gravities on both ends, so I really don't see how that would have happened anyway.

Make me smart ye mighty masters of the brew.
 
The secret is to pitch the yeast and walk away. Come back every 12 hours just to satisfy yourself that it is fermenting and then walk away again for 10 days.

That is the smartest way to handle the two toned brew you have got going.


edit - now that I reread you OP, I'd say forget what I said - I'm going to drink some coffee now. I go with the yeast floc theory.
 
samc said:
The secret is to pitch the yeast and walk away. Come back every 12 hours just to satisfy yourself that it is fermenting and then walk away again for 10 days.

That is the smartest way to handle the two toned brew you have got going.


edit - now that I reread you OP, I'd say forget what I said - I'm going to drink some coffee now. I go with the yeast floc theory.
Click to expand...

Heh, yeah I drove myself mad checking my first brew every few hours and one of the wise men of HBT told me to walk away and come back in a few weeks. That's standard practice now. I check in the next day, and maybe the second as well, because I'd hate to miss out on the airlock going nuts. After that I only pop in to take gravity readings to verify that I've completed fermentation before I clear in secondary. I leave that alone until it's time to keg, with the exception of peeking into the closet about once a week to see how it's clearing and make sure there's nothing funky growing on top.

I've got an exam in a few hours, and a final tomorrow, but I'll check back after the final to see what everyone thinks.
 
passedpawn said:
Dark part is clear; the light part has yeast in suspension. If you get it cold, the yeast will continue to come out of suspension and the line between the two colors will drop, and eventually the whole thing will look dark.
Click to expand...

^ this.

The reason it stratified rather quickly was that you moved it around. This is why a lot of people will report that their beer clears very quickly immediately following a racking over to a secondary. It's not the fact that it's in a new vessel but rather that it got all stirred up and encourage more sedimentation. When I cold crash my primary, I often give the fermenter a good swirl and shimmy and it falls clear overnight in the cold. I don't know the physics involved but I wonder if it has anything to do with a slight degassing of CO2.

If you package the beer in its current state, that yeast will eventually settle in the keg or bottle. I personally like to wait until it happens in the primary.
 
ajmartinez said:
Could you elaborate please? I've never had an infected beer before, but they're apparently akin to crashing in the motorcycling world. Nobody wants one, few admit when they've had one, but if you do it long enough it will happen. While I did not monitor every moment of the fermentation process (a little busy with work and a partial differential equations course) I did check in fairly regularly and never saw anything unusual on or in the beer. That is, of course, until I moved the carboy from the closet to the kitchen counter.

I can't imagine that what's going on is at all right, because it's hard to fathom something with a grain bill consisting of only 2-row and Vienna (with the vast majority being 2-row) ever getting that dark. I'd just like to get "smarter" with regards to what's wrong. My only other thought on the matter is that I do use Iodophor, but if the iodine was going to react with any starches it would have done it when I racked to secondary and not a month later. I hit my gravities on both ends, so I really don't see how that would have happened anyway.

Make me smart ye mighty masters of the brew.
Click to expand...

Sorry...I thought you would have got the joke. Kind of a joke around here that when something appears to have gone wrong beginers assume possible infection. That's why I added the :cross: face, like I was making a joke which I was. Looks fine to me in fact looks good. Sorry to confuse you.
 
I still don't think the solution has been found. Nothing about a pale ale or his recipe should be that dark. The part in the center looks clear already and looks like the color it should be. The dark part looks like something else altogether.
 
Do you have any way to cold crash your carboy? I would be interested to see what would happen then.
 
Just wait and see. If something did go wrong (unlikely), that ship has already sailed. If not, you have a tasty brew. My suggestion is to go to the DIY forum and go build something to keep your mind/hands busy in the meantime.

That's what I do.

-moomoo
 
...Get that thing out of the sunlight while you're waiting it out (in case you haven't).
 
If he pulled a sample from the "dark" section on top and dropped it into a typical pint glass, it would look just like any other pale ale. You're looking through 12" of very clear beer, essentially seeing the backsplash that is in shadow (dark)
 
Bobby_M said:
If he pulled a sample from the "dark" section on top and dropped it into a typical pint glass, it would look just like any other pale ale. You're looking through 12" of very clear beer, essentially seeing the backsplash that is in shadow (dark)
Click to expand...

Agree, even if the top portion is a little darker than it should be (pictures always are), there is no way the lighter portion could be the finished color of a pale ale. Looking through 12" of beer that color would give a beer of like 2 SRM...way too light.
 
I was wondering if you used any fining ingrediants like Irish Moss or a Wifroc tablet at the end of your boil. Sometimes I have noticed in my brews towards the very end of fermentation that the top does get a little darker than the rest of the carboy, especaillly if I use a fining agent.

If you want to do an experiment, you can swirl the carboy to mix all the yeast that has settled to the bottom and wait a day to see if when it settles out again if you have the same conditions. I suspect you will. If you do, I would say you don't really have any problem just different clearing at different sections of the carboy and proceed with your kegging or bottling.

Trip
 
Look, you can listen to the experienced folks with thousands of posts and many many years of brewing experience.... or have stupid panicked knee jerk reactions to something that has happened with every beer; you just haven't noticed it yet, in response to the comments of both those who don't know what this is and are making wild theories and those who do know what it is but wish to cause you to panick and laugh while you chase your tail. Your call. Here is what that is. plain and simple:

IT IS THE YEAST SETTLING OUT OF SUSPENSION! It is most visible on LIGHT colored beers because there is little else to see than the yeast or lack there of. Proper course of action is to wait till it's done and your beer will be clear and beautiful.
 
Here's an example without quite such a defined line, but notice it is "darker" at the top....

yeast_starter_chilled_sm.jpg


and another... again not as defined a line, but look at the "darkness" at the top

clearing.gif
 
These 4 beers are all nearly identical wheat beers. The only difference was the yeast. The two on the left used a wheat yeast, Wyeast 3068, which does NOT flocculate well. The two on the right are also wheat beers with S-04, which flocs VERY well. What conclusion can we draw from this pic?

Bavarian_Hefe_Left_-_Wildflower_Wheat_Right_.JPG


Here is the one beer on the right, in a glass. I don't have a pic of

Wildflower_Wheat.JPG
 
passedpawn said:
These 4 beers are all nearly identical wheat beers. The only difference was the yeast. The two on the left used a wheat yeast, Wyeast 3068, which does NOT flocculate well. The two on the right are also wheat beers with S-04, which flocs VERY well. What conclusion can we draw from this pic?

Here is the one beer on the right, in a glass. I don't have a pic of
Click to expand...

Ummm....you like wheat beers?
 
Thanks for the responses. It smells like beer. I haven't tasted yet. Again, was busy attempting to not fail partial differential equations so I can get another piece of paper (in addition to my DD214) that says "this individual is capable of putting up with completely insane BS without killing anyone he wasn't supposed to kill for 4 years."

The beer wasn't in the light, I pulled it out of the dark closet and put it on the counter. I snapped the picture, and then covered it with a bag so opaque I actually load film canisters in it with no fogging. It's back under the stairs now.

Dark band up top is normal. Got it. I shall resume enjoying my last homebrew, or maybe I'll shift up into some Scotch because the last two days of exams were less fun than getting mortared every day for a month.
 
I've brewed for years and my primaries are Ale Pails which are opaque, so I've never seen what the fermenting beer looks like. Oh well.....
 
Dhruv6911 said:
Relax cowboy, it was just a theory... some people really get worked up over nothing.
Click to expand...

First, I didn't really get worked up. Just expressed my bafflement at the suggestion in passing.

Second, "Nothing?" A guy posts here worried that there's something wrong with his beer and he get's BS answers lobbed at him. If you don't know/have a clue, don't pull things out of the air. Say, "oh, that weird," or, " haven't seen that before." But don't cause a guy undo stress, when the beer is doing exactly what it's suppose to.
 
Bierliebhaber said:
Second, "Nothing?" A guy posts here worried that there's something wrong with his beer and he get's BS answers lobbed at him. If you don't know/have a clue, don't pull things out of the air. Say, "oh, that weird," or, " haven't seen that before." But don't cause a guy undo stress, when the beer is doing exactly what it's suppose to.
Click to expand...

Sounds like "getting worked up" to me...:cross:
 

Similar threads

S
Fruit concentrate kit instructions don't seem right?
Replies
4
Views
482
RPh_Guy
RPh_Guy
EtchyLives
WLP 037 Yorkshire Square Yeast Results
Replies
2
Views
1K
ba-brewer
ba-brewer
M
Trying to make some session meads with stabilizing and fruit and not sure what happened.
Replies
2
Views
1K
madscientist451
madscientist451
Jeremy9991
E-Herms DIPA Gone Awry...
Replies
10
Views
1K
ChappysBrewing
C
shoengine
What a (nearly) disasterous brewday
Replies
16
Views
1K
shoengine
shoengine
Williams Brewing 300

Latest posts

Back
Top