Weird.

[eyebrau]

So I brewed a SMaSH blonde this past weekend. Mashed overnight in my cooler MLT. Only weird thing I can think of is I mashed to thin and couldn't vorlauf clear for the life of me, so I just ran it through a small filter to take the grain out of the runnings. Refractometer gave a post boil reading of 10.5 brix. Rehydrated and pitched Notty properly, put the bucket (I have 2 bottle buckets, use them intermittently as fermentation vessel and bottling bucket) in my temperature controlled chest freezer at 64F and left it. Raised it to 68F on Tuesday. Calculated FG was 1.012, but I knew that because of the overnight mash, I was anticipating as low as about 1.005 or so. Pulled a small sample from the spigot this evening. First of all, it is beyond cloudy. It's downright milky. It smells yeasty as hell, but tastes ok (though extremely green). I checked the refractometer, which read 4 brix - according to the calculator I used that puts it at 1.000... now I know refractometers are wonky once there's alcohol, but it's only a 3 gallon batch and I don't want to pull enough for a hydrometer reading if it can be avoided. Could this be right though? And the milkiness - any ideas? Yeast? Flour from the mash? If gravity hasn't moved Sunday evening/Monday morning I planned to cold crash with gelatin, will that clear it, you think?View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1496366666.060956.jpg

 

[kh54s10]

So it is now day 4 or 5? Why are you messing with it so soon? It will most likely clear quite a bit in a few more days to a week and a half or so. A cold crash and gelatin should clear anything left.

Your refractometer reading is not correct. You might look at this calculator to see if it will give you a good number: https://www.brewersfriend.com/refractometer-calculator/

 

[eyebrau]

Yep, that makes more sense. Apparently the calculator I was using sucks. Thanks.

Wouldn't say I was really "messing" with it, I've just had Notty finish very quickly in the past. I'm going to be gone all weekend, but wanted to take the third day second reading when I got back to potentially cold crash then (if gravity hadn't moved... with it currently at 1.006 per that calculator, I hope it doesn't drop anymore...). With all the talk on here of grain to glass in X days, I was just curious to see how quickly I could get a low gravity beer through.

 

[kh54s10]

My theory on grain to glass in X days is not to push it much. I do 14 days as a minimum. It doesn't hurt to go longer and could be really bad if you didn't wait long enough.

 

[Sir-Hops-A-Lot]

Is the problem the cloudiness or the final gravity? or both?
Either way you should leave it alone for about a week. Yeasts clear at different rates. The term for his is flocculation. If it isn't clear you can add gelatine or cold crash it.
Consider posting the recipe and the mash temp. The overnight mash should be fine unless the mash temp is very very low.

 

[eyebrau]

Recipe was extremely simple - 6# 2-row, with a .5oz glacier hop bittering charge (30mins), .25 glacier at 15mins, and .25 in whirlpool. Mashed at 153F. 3 gallons finished, though I think it came out more like 3.5 gallons. Think my boil off rate is off.

Was honestly more concerned about the cloudiness, the gravity I figured was from an unreliable calculator. I've seen cloudy beer from unflocced yeast, but nothing quite so thick as this. Was afraid there might have been something else going on.