Foam up

[sause]

I checked my brew about 12 hours into it and it had a extremely white foam to it, wait one more day and the white foam turned into a brown foam, is this bad or good? Also it seems to pushed something brown up onto the sides of the carboy is this the yeast or something else and is this something good or bad?

 

[The Professor]

The brown foam and sediment on the sides of your carboy are both good signs. The brown particles in the foam are yeast mixed with sediments from your beer. The sediments are proteins, hops and yeast and they will collect on the sides of your carboy. The foam was white in the begining because it takes a while for the yeast activity to stir up the sediment and floculate (group together). If you look closely at your beer through the carboy you will notice that the beer has little currents flowing through it. This is from yeast activity and the reason the sediment gets picked up from the bottom of the fermentor. All signs of a healthy fermentation.