Did too many new things at once...contaminated or biz as usual?

Used irish moss at the end of the boil for the first time, used liquid yeast for the first time, then dry hopped for the first time (plugs, loose in secondary)... Told myself I ought not to do the noob thing and write asking whether or not my beer is broken, especially without including a pic, but please see my question (and the forfeiture of my dignity) below and write back to tell my if every thing will be alright...

thanks in advance...

the beer (an IPA made with WL001) worked its way through primary fermentation after 4-5 days... i left it in the primary 2 more days and racked to a glass carboy. 2 days later I added a couple of hop plugs, which i cut in half using a sanitized knife on a sanitized surface. the plugs broke up and formed an inch-thick layer of hop matter on the surface and started to fall out very gradually. 5ish days after adding the hops, the batch has cleared very nicely, but globules (i'm hopefully thinking that they look yeasty...) are apparent on the insides of the carboy, up from the yeast cake and concentrated somewhat along the first textured ring of the carboy from the bottom. they creep up and peter out from there all the way up to the hop matter suspended on the top surface of the beer... just spent 20 minutes shooting pics, finally got one, and realized my laptop won't swallow my camera's memory card... will get the pic emailed to myself and posted, but the pic sucks in any event...

beer clarified rapidly as the globules were forming...i understand that irish moss promotes clumping...is that what i'm seeing? they look a bit like krausens stuck to the glass...globs no bigger than pencil erasers...

the batch is crystal clear save for this junk on the edges of the carboy...saturated hop matter is falling out from the surface occasionally, but other than that it is beer commercial-clear...

temp in primary was btw 71-73 F, ambient temp in the room where the secondary sat was (is) constant 68 F...

any thoughts?


Thanks again....

Oh, your beer is definitely ruined, just terrible...Just kidding, your beer is A-Okay. So as you know, yeast produce CO2 as a byproduct. What you are most likely seeing is small pockets of produced CO2 with yeast surrounding it. The bubble is just small enough that it floats to the top and then like you said, once it hits the hop matter on top it falls apart and peters out. It probably is not doing it a whole lot because there is not too much fermentation still going on. Don't worry about it

It's fine. You can leave it for a while longer, allow more settling, or move it off the hops to settle once more before bottling/kegging.

and while it may feel like too many new things at once, your process sounds just fine, as does the description of what you're seeing.
Congrats! -