Chunky lager

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Sadu

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I found these cool growlers at the recycling center for $2 each and since it's so damn cold right now I figured it's lager time. They didn't have lids so I made my own with the 3d printer. Life is good when you can use one hobby to complement another :mug:

So I brewed a 1 gallon SMaSH Pilsner with Saaz and 34/70 yeast at 12c / 54f.

This is my first lager brew, and first time fermenting in glass. Here are the pics after 2 weeks - check out those chunks. Wow. Is this how it's meant to look?

I pitched US-05 ale into one of the growlers and it looks the same, so the chunks arent anything to do with the yeast. They seem to float around on top, if I bump the bottle they drop down, and sometimes float back up. You could scare small children with these things. I can't stop looking at them.

The lager brew is at FG and tastes surprisingly like pilsner. Flavours are clean. So I'm thinking this is all normal?

I did have some sanitation concerns on this batch, a fair bit of ice bath water accidentally ended up in the kettle plus the 3d printed blowoffs version 1 are a below average seal. I'm planning to recycle the yeast for a bigger batch hence thought it would be good to check if this looks ok to everyone.

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Some yeast strains will flocculate like that. And if there is plenty of trub to bind to it can get quite clumpy. As long as the beer itself is in good shape than it's probably fine.
 
I posted these pics on facebook and managed to scare all my friends. Guess I better not tell them where meat comes from.

I find it fascinating though.

I racked this today for lagering, can't wait to see how this comes out. 1 gallon after the chunks taken out, it's not going to last long.
 
That looks strange to me. Did you taste it? How was it?

At the time I took these pics it tasted good, very clean with no off flavours.

A few days later I did the diacetyl rest, racked to secondary, lagered for 10 days or so then bottled. The sample at bottle time wasn't great at all, there was an off flavour which I don't have any experience with but concensus here is that it's a low-moderate amount of diacetyl (tastes like something oily coating the lips and tongue, though not butterscotch).

I'm open minded about this as a learning experience, it was only a 1 gallon brew and I split the batch between lager yeast and us-05 ale yeast so the ale version should still come out good if this is in fact diacetyl.

If lagers are going to be too much of a hassle I still have a whole lot of exploring to do in the world of ales.
 
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