Is my beer contaminated?

Hello all,

I brewed a clone of stone's 2010 vertical epic and fear that it may be contaminated. It has been in primary for 19 days now, and has what looks to me like yeast balls/flocs floating on the surface. I used the wyeast belgian ardennes strain as per the suggestion on stone's website. Wyeast claims this is a very flocculent yeast, but ive never seen chunks on the surface like this before. Is it normal for this yeast? Or am I looking at some kind of funk? The gravity sample tasted fine. Am I panicking for nothing. I can provide a pic if y'all feel like you need it, but I would really rather leave the lid on it if I can...thanks in advance....wnc

Yeah we need to see a pic...more than likely you're panicking for nothing and what you have are yeast rafts.

It doesn't smell infected...the banana esters are divine. I usually open ferment all my belgians (until krausen starts to fall) but this is a first...thanks for the quick response

It's too dark to get an accurate picture. Looks like hops and krausen to me.

Crappy cell phone camera...I left home but I'll try to get a better pic when I get home tonight. Upon my second look, I'm pretty sure it is yeast wads. I was planning on leaving it in primary for another 10-14 days anyhow...so maybe they'll fall down where they belong

+1 to Revvy. Hops and krausen. Possibly some floaters of protein globs too.

Take a gravity reading and taste it. If gravity is in the right region (you have lots of alcohol), and it tastes OK, then quit worrying.

I am one hundred percent sure it isn't hops, this beer had a proportionally small amount of hops and I used pellets. The globs that look like hop cones appear to be yeast. Gravity was 1.009, which is real close to where I thought it would finish up

Something I forgot to mention....

I added two quarts of fresh muscadine grape juice when gravity reached 1.036. I heated it to 200*, covered it and let it come to ambient temperature before adding it. Could that have something to do with it?

Pellet hops look like that if they are not filtered out.

PurpleJeepXJ said:

Pellet hops look like that if they are not filtered out.

Click to expand...

Still not convinced, I whirlpool and filter through a mesh strainer. I sometimes get hops into primary when I brew with lots of hops, but it takes about 10 oz to get the hop level above my pickup tube. Don't mean to sound argumentative though...perhaps it is hops