by EziTasting » Mon Jul 11, 2016 8:35 am
G'Day Bushy,
in all the TPW I've run, I've never had a thick crust like that... a crust will form, I've found, but it goes away during the fermentation and settles out at the bottom after about a week and a half. I find mine goes from milky pink to clearish pink to a yellowy clear the longer I leave it.
I use the cheapest tomato paste on the shelf, but have used Pizza tomato topping with herbs and such (because my maths wasn't that good at the time and I ran out of paste) and that reacted the same as all the others. I use good old bakers yeast from Coles....
At a guess, your tomato paste may, in conjunction with the EC1118 do things a little differently giving you that 'smashed brains' look, but if the end result is still good, you have no problem, IMO.
Try same paste and different yeast, or different paste and same yeast... I'd save the EC1118 for something more like making one of the Whiskies...