Mid-brew... hop bag floating?

I'm 10 minutes into a boil, first time using a paint strainer bag (5 gallons) suspended over the boil kettle. I threw like 8 SS spoons in there, which keep part of the bag sunk into the wort, in a kind of circle shape. In the middle of the circle is a big "bubble" of gas from the boil, pushing up on the bag. Is this normal? Is there anything else I can do to get the bag to stay down, and get the hops into more contact? Should I be stirring constantly?

Thanks!

Is it a fine mesh bag? That could be why the bubble is forming.

It should be fine. Take a stir spoon and sink the bag every once in a while when you stir. I usually put my hops loosely in a hop sock that just sort of floats about in the pot and I sink it from time to time with my stir spoon.

Remember just above the wort the steam coming off the wort is even hotter than the wort and that will be steaming all the hop goodness as well which will work back into the kettle.

Ok cool, all set! I poked it down occasionally, and it seems to have turned out fine, the wort is extremely hoppy. I only got 4 gallons out cause my dip tube needs improvement, but I think those 4 gallons will be pretty good! Thanks for the help!

Glad it worked out.

Couldn't you just dump the rest of the wort out of the kettle? You will end up with some more solids that way, but they'll mostly settle out in the trub.

Also if the lower volume is due to boiloff and you have a heavy gravity you can top off with some distilled or pre-boiled water to get your volume up. You just need to make sure you don't water the gravity down to much.