My first all grain brew looks like chocolate milkshake.

Hi There,

I'm new to this site and all grain brewing. I used to do extract but decided to pursue all grain.

My first all grain brew has been fermenting for 5 days in a conical fermenter and when I draw from the top tap to take gravity readings it looks like chocolate milkshake  Have I pitched too much yeast?

I made a yeast starter for the first time over 3 stages on a stir plate.

Any comments will be appreciated as this is really stressing me out

Many thanks

I would love to have that problem.

Can't say whether or not you pitched to much yeast without details on your pitch and volume of your brew.  I really suspect your fermentation is just beginning to slow down and the yeast is still suspended.  Take another sample in five days.  You will more than likely see that your beer has cleared quite a bit.

Don't worry about it. Being your first all-grain, it's going to have stuff in it like trub and grain particles that the extract makers would have left behind. I'm sure it will settle out with time. It's only been a week.

I made an all-grain pumpkin beer last year and used five pounds of canned pumpkin in it. The sparge stuck like a bastard and I had no choice but to stir it.  As a result I had both grain and pumpkin material in the beer and it wouldn't clear. I tried bentonite and isinglass, and neither worked. Finally I used a filtering setup from William's Brewing and that did the job. Came out great. But in that case the culprit was the pumpkin.

Worst case scenario you may need to filter the beer, but I doubt you'll need to. The sediment should settle out a week or two after the yeast has completed its job.

So relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew.

You are right about needing to be patient.  I won't draw an SG sample until at least the 10th day in the fermentor.  Come back to your fermentor in a week.  If your SG sample hasn't cleared then we can go into troubleshooting.

The trub/yeast layer will look like a lot until it compacts.  Needs some time.