Whole lotta yeast!

[olie]

What with one thing and another, I was poking around YouTube and ran across this video (link starts at 1:40).

Near as I can tell, the guy's got about a gallon of yeast in the bottom of his carboy. (Right?! Am I seeing this incorrectly?)

What might I be doing at some point in my brewing future that would result in that much yeast? Usually when I make a batch, it doesn't even cover the domed bottom of the carboy!

Thanks!

 

[Qhrumphf]

Watching no more than a few seconds without sound, that may include a lot of trub and hop matter. If this was an IPA with no effort to separate kettle debris from fermenter, and then heavily dry hopped, that'd do it.

 

[olie]

Ok, thanks. It had the appearance of a uniform yellow (I think: yeast-colored) layer, but "boatload of hops" piled in there would account for some bulk.

Anyway... I suppose I'll know when it happens; just made me gasp when I watched the vid.

Thanks!

 

[RM-MN]

If you have been doing extract batches of beer you are missing a lot of the trub because it was separated out during the process of making the extract. If you do all grain batches you will have all the proteins (break material) in your boil pot and then can decide to try to separate them out before transferring to the fermenter (whirlpooling) or just dumping them all in. If you dump them all in (I'd suggest that, you get more beer in the end) you will have a big bunch of material in your fermenter. Given time, this trub (specialized term meaning the break material, hops, and yeast) will settle and compact, releasing the beer to be racked off.

 

[olie]

Sure, I get all that. I guess I just hadn't realized the amount. (Screencap from video.)

And then, having uploaded that, the pic next to it was a fermentor over half-full of yeast & trub! So I guess I'm not surprised, anymore.

Thanks!

Screen Shot 2018-05-01 At 6.41.59 PM

• olie
• May 1, 2018

Screen cap from a video where I was surprised by the amount of yeast at the bottom. I guess I'm...

 

[RM-MN]

Sure, I get all that. I guess I just hadn't realized the amount. (Screencap from video.)

And then, having uploaded that, the pic next to it was a fermentor over half-full of yeast & trub! So I guess I'm not surprised, anymore.

Thanks!

Screen Shot 2018-05-01 At 6.41.59 PM

• olie
• May 1, 2018

Screen cap from a video where I was surprised by the amount of yeast at the bottom. I guess I'm...

That picture seems to show racking to secondary (not necessary) before the trub has a chance to settle. He is probably leaving at least a quart of beer that is still in that trub layer that could have been recovered if he left it alone for another week. Beer doesn't like to be rushed. Leave it in the primary fermenter until the trub compacts so you can recover more of your beer, then just rack it to the bottling bucket.

Oops, that was racking to a keg, not secondary. He still should have left the beer longer in the fermenter so the trub would compact more and release more beer to be racked.