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Ok. Day three into brewing my first ever batch of brew. It is an American Amber Ale from a kit. Moved it to the glass carboy and its been in there for 3 days. It bubbled like crazy the first two days and created a crazy thick brown head, but now it bubbles about once every 5-10 min and the head has died. But it left behind this thick crust of caramel colored crust on the in sides of the carboy. Is this normal? Should I gently swirl the brew to get that crust back into the liquid, or just leave it.

Total newbie question, but it worried me this morning for some reason.

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Completely normal. This is left over crud from the krausen that forms during active fermentation.

Just go ahead ad leave it, that's stuff that would just settle to the bottom and soak up beer. When you rack off the yeast and such at the bottom of the carboy you'll simply have ever so slightly less at the bottom absorbing beer.

Definitely not something to be worried about and is actually a very good sign that your fermentation is going well.

What I would look for is signs of odd colors (I've had black splotches or exceptionally dark crust on the carboy that was due to an infection). I doubt this is an issue in this case sense you mentioned it is vaguely caramel colored which is likely a good sign.

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  • See, this is why I come here :)...
    – Steve M.
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 19:24
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Leave it alone. It's perfectly normal. It's the krausen ring, and is just dried proteins, hop bits and other solids from your wort. There's no reason to get it back in solution, and in fact you probably wouldn't be able to if you tried. Krausen rings are notoriously hard to clean :)

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  • Actually a good hot PBW soak does wonders. I can usually let it soak for about 30 minutes and twist the carboy quickly and watch the vast majority of the ring float right down to the bottom of the carboy. A good strong spray takes care of the rest before the sanitizer goes in.
    – Kevin Colby
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 19:43

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