The :event key is the important bit here. The keys prefixed with colons are just the internal logstash logging decoration. { :timestamp=>"2014-10-20T17:52:29.931000+0000", :message=>"output received", :event=>{ "host"=>"deployment-parsoid04", "short_message"=>"started parsing", "facility"=>"parsoid", "level"=>6, "full_message"=>"{\n \"name\": \"parsoid\",\n \"hostname\": \"deployment-parsoid04\",\n \"pid\": 26612,\n \"level\": 30,\n \"type\": \"info\",\n \"location\": \"[info][enwiki/Black_cat?oldid=52615]\",\n \"msg\": \"started parsing\",\n \"time\": \"2014-10-20T17:52:24.900Z\",\n \"v\": 0\n}", "version"=>"1.0", "@version"=>"1", "@timestamp"=>"2014-10-20T17:52:24.900Z", "source_host"=>"10.68.16.17", "pid"=>26612, "type"=>"info", "location"=>"[info][enwiki/Black_cat?oldid=52615]" }, :level=>:debug, :file=>"(eval)", :line=>"1199" }