Went to take gravity reading from secondary, looking at Carboy it looks fine , sample

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Beardown

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Title says it all,,, the beer looks great when I look at the Carboy, but when I snatch a sample it is much lighter and milky ? What the heck? I made a point to not get any of the dead yeast in there, confused, this normal?
 

Jhu1321

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The carboy is thick and thus it views darker. When looking at it in a smaller vessel it will look lighter which will show the "milkiness" of it.
 

eadavis80

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Beer looks darker in larger volumes so that's probably why it looks ligher in your sample. For example, when I bottle the color of the liquid in the bottling bucket (5 gallons) always looks darker than what is in a pint glass. Now, why the sample looks "milky" I don't know.
 

Sailingeric

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Milky is probably yeast in suspension. Either cold crash it or give it time to settle. I had a stout that was like chocolate milk when I kegged it thanks to me sucking up some trub. After a couple day sitting in the kegerator it was as dark as night.
 

Challenger440

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You are seeing Beer's Law (how freaking appropriate!) in action.

A=elc

Absorption = molar absorptivity * path length * concentration

Your carbon has a much longer path length for the light to go through which makes its light absorption higher, thus appears darker.

As for the milky, as others have said, yeast in suspension.

Brew on :mug:
 

RM-MN

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Title says it all,,, the beer looks great when I look at the Carboy, but when I snatch a sample it is much lighter and milky ? What the heck? I made a point to not get any of the dead yeast in there, confused, this normal?

It's normal and it probably means you are taking a sample too early and the yeast haven't finished fermenting the beer and there is still a lot of yeast suspended. Try waiting another week and see if that changes anything.:rockin:
 
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