Made 10g of a Sam Smith Nut Brown Ale clone. Split half in a bucket, half in a Better Bottle for primary. Used WLP037 (only 8 days old when it arrived) and made an appropriate starter which I decanted and split in to 2 equal glasses to pitch. Fermented side by side at 65F. Raised to 67F 3 days ago.
At 2 weeks and a couple of days the BB is at 1.016 and the bucket is at 1.012. WTF?
Dave
ahh the vagaries of nature.
slightly more yeast or o2 in bucket? slight stratification when you ran off into the fermenters?
Maybe the starter settled a bit before you split it and the bucket got more initial yeast (037 is a high flocculator)? Bigger headspace in the bucket led to better oxygenation at the start? Maybe the wort into the bucket had a lower OG than the bottle due to kettle stratification?
I’m just taking wild guesses here.
Two speculative thoughts. I brew 10 gal batches which I split equally between two carboys. I often make a single starter which I then split approximately equally between the two carboys. I often find that one carboy starts and finishes faster than the other which I assume is due to different amounts of yeast. I don’t generally measure the FG of both carboys assuming they finish at the same FG.
Did you see one batch start faster than the other?
Is it possible there is more air going into the bucket before and during the fermentation causing a more complete fermentation in the bucket?
Beer Gremlins.
yeah, these guys are nasty little boogers. and they don’t stop there. i have had beer vanish from my fridge without any other explanation. Or could it be my sons and their friends? Nah.
on the other hand. the final gravity is 1.014, one you read a little low on the hydrometer the other you erred high. hence both readings demonstrating the same accuracy (distance to true number) but precision is off (measure of repeatability) solve the first with averaging, the second problem with calibration.
This is why experiments, including brewing experiments, that aren’t replicated are crap.
So he should brew 10 more gallons, split, and ferment with the same yeasts?
Sounds like a great suggestion to me.
+1 on the explanation. Sometimes the numbers don’t cooperate. It’s within the margin of error (1.014). RDWHAHB!
blend 'em together and call it a day! 
Sounds like a plan. I’ll even re-combine the slurrys for the pitch. Need to make 10g of my ESB anyway! Let’s see what these gremlins try this time…
As to the above, I think the only reasonable explanation would be stratification. I did fill the bucket first so I could see in the BB when I started sucking up trub.
I also hit every number on the button for this brew and the FG number I wanted was 1.012. I’d rather RDWHAHB and just pretend they both got there! :
Dave
EDIT: I forgot to add that I swirled the starter and poured back and forth in the glasses until full. They had to be very close to even…
I did this recently with 10 gallons of porter that had the same sort of finishing differential between fermenters. No one is the wiser.