What is the stuff forming at the bottom of the primary fermentor?

[mm55]

Hi,

First post here and first attempt at making beer from a kit! So, I pitched the Wort last night and after a couple of hours I noticed a couple of inches of a sandy coloured substance settling on the bottom. I woke up this morning, and there is slightly less of it there.

I'm brewing a Pilsner lager and nothing I've read mentions what this could be. I'm aware that the yeast falls to the bottom when fermentation is done, so I'm pretty sure it's not the yeast. Any ideas? At last check the yeast was clumping on top, but no other visible signs of fermentation.

Temperature is around 18 degrees celcius. Maybe a tiny bit lower. I'm aware that I need to have patience for the next couple of days, but because I've not read anything about the layer forming on the bottom, I thought I'd ask

 

[Brewnoob1]

The stuff at the bottom is called trub. It's proteins, hop ,material, dead and/or flocculated yeast, etc. It's all the stuff as by products from the fermentation process. It's 100% normal.

 

[WoodlandBrew]

mostly flocculated yeast and protein. There is a good mix of viable (live) and dead yeast even in the cake at the bottom.

 

[mm55]

Wow, thanks for the quick response. Glad to hear that it's perfectly normal. Looking forward to seeing how my first batch turns out.

 

[user 98891]

Totally normal (as others have said). Fermenting beer comes in many different looks and all of them are pretty strange or nasty at some point. This is why I like new friends to use buckets so they don't look and get worried.

 

[mm55]

I've seen lots of pictures of the fermentation process and none of them seemed to show such a large amount of trub so early on, I think that's why I was a little concerned.

Thanks for all of the reassuring responses!

 

[user 98891]

You can get more or less trub depending on how 'clean' your racking from the boil kettle to the fermentor was.

For example, I've had the most trub when I first started out and was just dumping the kettle into the bucket. Now that I whirlpool chill, use whirlfloc, and siphon from the side I get much less trub in my bucket. The gravity of the beer also pays a significant part imho.

 

[mm55]

Looks like I've got a krausen ring, so definite signs of fermentation. Yay!