Hops are rising !

So I racked my APA into the secondary and then placed it in the closet. I then thought, Oh yeah, I was going to dry hop it. So, I sprinkled about 1/2 oz of cascade hops on top. There wasn't a whole lot of room at the top of the carboy mind you.

They have expanded.

Its been one night and they seem to be slowly rising. This morning, there was some orange-ish water in the airlock. Below is a picture of my dilemma. From one brewer to another, I'm panicking. (They were pellets)

All that is happening is the hops particles are picking up some CO2 and floating. They will probably sink in a couple more days. The orange water in the airlock probably has a lot of very fine hop resin in it. Clean the airlock as necessary.

Well, I freaked out a bit and decided to take action. I sanitized some cheese cloth in BTF, took the carboy out and removed the airlock (placeing it in sanitizing solution), then wrapped the cheese cloth around the top and pour a bit of the beer out to make some room. A bit of a risk (exposing it) and a couple downed soldiers, but it will probably be ok now. Most of the hops sunk to the bottom from tilting the carboy -90 degrees. Thanks for the help david

I had a similar situation with a dry hop. Fermented well, then the primary had no activity for a few days, so I racked and dry hopped with Kent Goldings (1 oz).

The next day, I noticed some activity (the kind where yeast is bouncing all around) and wondered if there was some kind of bacteria issue.

I've yet to try it, so I can't say whether it was contaminated--- but I (like Somerville) thought that activity should be finished once the beer hits the secondary.

Next time, I would have just slapped on a blow off tube while the pellets settled down to the bottom. It'll live.

That pic looks like some crazy surreal painting. next time just take a clean wine thief (or turkey baster youve NEVER stuck into a turkey) sanitize it and carefully remove a pint or so of beer.

One second thought, that looks really bad and you should ship it up here. We know how to deal with strange brew in the PNW.

Haha thanks guys, all good advice