Expert: Dave Nyce - 1/13/2005

Question
Hi guys! As you could see in the topic I'm a new to home brewing and of course I have some questions. It's impossible to find malt extract in my homeland Croatia, so I try to make beer with all grains method.
During the first fermentation I haven't used blow-off hose, but an airlock all the time. For three days beer fermented and foam on the top of the wort was full of ‘dirt', hops' remains and other stuff. Now the foam is gone and all the 'dirt' is back to beer.
My question is did I make a big problem not using a blow-off tube and is the solution filtering during bottling? I must say that at the moment my wort doesn't look attractive at all with all those things floating on the top of it. I use a glass carboy so I can see it.
And one more question. There's no any kind of action in the carboy since yesterday. Should I let the wort to rest for a day or two, or I should rack it as soon as possible?
Sorry if my English is not completely understandable and thank you very much for any kind of help.  

Answer
Next time, you can filter the the results of your "all grains method", before adding more water and starting the fermentation.

With your present batch, it should be no problem to rack a clean liquid by carefully positioning the siphon tube, as long as the contaminants are concentrated at the top and bottom of the carboy.

After racking, some fermentation will likely start again. Then wait a few more days before bottling. At that point, the wort should clear up and only have sediment on the bottom (assuming that you removed the floating debris at the last racking).

Filtering at bottling is an extra step that I usually avoid, but you can do that if there are still visible contaminants.

I think it is fine to use fermentation trap.

Hope this helps!

Dave