What the hell is in my bottles?

[adamhimself]

So, to me everything seemed to come out fine. I did panic a little, but as I learned more I felt more comfortable with what I was doing.

So, I decided to check out my bottles. There seemed to be a bunch of stuff hanging out at the bottom of my beers, when held up the light and I would turn the bottle upside down it was very dark and freaked me out. But, I didn't worry.

I cracked one open (10 days in bottle). It clearly had some carbonation, though a little more would be nice. The stuff at the bottom was beige in color and I assume its yeast? Correct? I know some Belgian brews are unfiltered and leave yeast on the bottom. So, is this the same thing? Perfectly normal?

The beer was hazey, but not overly so. It did appear "oily" on the top a little as if the "heavier" beer sat on the bottom while the less heavy was on top. The top inch or two of the beer was much clearer. This may be the light though.

I did do a taste test and it wasn't bad. It wasn't amazing, but it was very drinkable. I could definitely taste the alcohol, but im not surprised because I hit the proper OG and FG. I could see this being much better in a month or two.

So to sum up:

Is the stuff at the bottom (milk beige in color and consistency) perfectly normal?

Just in case, is there anything I should know about in matters of getting sick off some weird bacteria or something along those lines? Or does the alcohol take care of that for the most part?

Thanks.

 

[Zen_Brew]

Milk beige is absolutely yeast settling out. No worries.

You can carefully pour the beer so as not to disturb it when you have some, or just dump it in the glass with the beer. Some prefer the yeast in their beer, and some don't. No harm comes of it, it is actually healthy for you, but may cloud the beer a bit and cause some yeasty gas later in the evening from the drinker.

Also there are no dangerous pathogens that can live in beer. Any nasties that do get in there mainly just funk up the taste.

 

[scrambledegg81]

About the only thing that sediment will mess with is your gut (just unpleasant "after-effects" if you get where I'm going...). Other than that it's completely normal to have visible sediment in homebrew bottles.