Has anyone seen this before? Wild yeast?

Hi - this is the trub from my mr Bowenz IPA fermented with wy1178. The reason I suspect it's a nasty is because I've seen the same thing three times in a row using this barrel and three different yeast strains. Needless to say I'll trash the barrel or store grain in it. Funny thing is, beers taste fine.

Anyone seen this sort of thing before? The lumps are a bit jelly like to touch.

It's not yeast, and not an infection. Those are coagulating proteins. They will eventually fall to the bottom (hopefully). It's normal.

Some beers do it, and some don't. Pilnser malt seems to cause it more often, and the mash process might also have an effect.

Thats normal it will fall

Ha! Many thanks guys - I was going to turf the barrel too. I've been brewing a while now and have never noticed these until the last few batches. I've just started using koppafloc - reckon that would be the cause for it occurring?

Do you use irish moss or whirfloc tablets during your boil?

just started using koppafloc powder, and the amount of the gunkballs (above) does appear to be proportional to the amount of Koppa powder I've used, now that I think about it - for this beer I tipped in too much.

I never saw this using Irish moss.

Yea well it is a flocculant, so I bet that is your culprit right there. The only time in my experience I have seen something similar to this was when I didn't set the grain bed very well during my sparging, and I ended up getting a lot of extra proteins in my wort. If you started off with a large amount of proteins, and then used a flocculant, I could see something like that occurring. I think you can rule out wild yeast, though.