So my brew has been fermenting for about 5 days now. The strong fermentation is over and now I just get little bubbles in my airlock about twice a minute. The sediment in my carboy is about 20% of the total volume of my beer. The total volume was a little over 4 gallons and it was an all grain brew. I made sure to filter out as much grain as i could, straining it twice. Is this just normal for all grain brews? and will it just settle and compress over the next couple weeks or am I looking at about a 20% loss of overall volume? I made sure to filter out as much grain as i could, straining it twice.
It sounds like you have a lot of protein break material. Is it sort of fluffy? It will settle and compress. But what do you mean when you say you filtered/strained out grain material?
It sounds like OP isn't the most experience homebrewer and may not know the difference between trub and the yeast cake. OP: Did you also filter out the hops when transferring from the kettle to the fermentor?
Possibly. But my question was what could yeast strain possibly have to do with it? I mean, can anyone look at the volume of yeast cake or the volume of everything at the bottom and say "Oh yeah, that's a big cake because it was Wyeast 1056" (or whatever)?
Ok. Yes this is my first home-brew. Yeast Strain is American Ale 1056. What I mean by straining it, was that My filter in my mash tun wasn't working great so i passed the wort through a sieve twice before the boil. I did not strain it after the boil. The beer is a DFH "Punkin Ale" clone. And I do not have any idea what the difference between a yeast cake and a trub is. Also my hydrometer arrived broken and the replacement that they sent came after I started the beer, so I was not able to get a OG.
Keep in mind that some sediment tends to be attracted to the side of your carboy so that it appears that you have more sediment than it actually is.
It's OK. Just keep reading. Everything will start to click really soon. You'll watch yourself get better and better and the beer will show for it. You'll be broke but have plenty of amazing beer
