Infection?

This is in an APA that is now 2 weeks into secondary and has finished at about 1.016. I dropped the dry hops into a sanitized hop bag on saturday and put them in the carboy. Woke up this morning to some very strange objects floating and now I'm pretty worried. It smells normal and I haven't tasted it yet but I will this evening, just looking for some opinions. I've never used a hop bag to dry hop before, could this possibly be the culprit? got my fingers crossed.



thanks

It's either that hops came out of your bag and expanded in the liquid, you kicked clumps of yeast out of the trub, or you have restarted fermentation and yeast is blooming.

Or break material that floated up from the trub, or came out of suspension due maybe to hop oils from the dry hopping. Proteins coagulated.

But it's more than likely fine. "Infections" in beer, which are rare, are skins that form on top, not clumps of things.

Revvy's rarely, if ever wrong. And I concur, it looks like escaped hops.

If you used leaf hops rather than pellets that's what it looks like floating on top of your beer. I think Revvy is right that your hope bag opened up somehow.

it was 2 oz of pellet hops. I weighed the bag down with two sanitized butter knives, I guess it's possible they punctured the bottom of the bag? The floaties just didn't look like hop matter to me. Thanks for the responses! much appreciated.

Even pellets can be actually made of compressed whole hops, rather than reconstituted mush. They can "bloom" into cones when wet.

talked to the guys at the local Homebrew Store. They seem to think it's mold and that as long as it tastes ok I should bottle it asap. any thoughts on that?

That's not mold at all.....I've seen mold on the surface of fermenters, and that looks NOWHERE NEAR what mold looks like.

to me it looks like hops or yeast rafts, nothing to worry about. if it tastes fine i wouldnt worry about it

any advice on a course of action? is there any way to safely figure this out without ruining the beer? wait a day and see if it grows? bottle now just to be safe? I was leaning towards hop matter until the owner of the LHBS was so confident it was mold saying it looked "too clumpy"...

The course of action is ignore it. It doesn't look like anything unusual that you should worry about. It's not mold, nor is it a skin, a pellicule, THE ONLY WAYS infections manifest.

I already suggested to you what they were more than likely, in my very first post.

I would listen to Revvy.

427Cobra said:

I would listen to Revvy.

Click to expand...

Yup

I think you need a new LHBS....

Rdwhahb!