Dry Hopped Monster?

As some of you may have seen in another thread, I have a Northern brewer Double IPA kit that has been a strange one form day one.

It called for dry hopping onto 1oz of cascade. Despite sitting for two weeks in the primary with the gravity stalled at 1.020, it still had some krausen foam on the top when I racked. I racked it onto the cascade pellets. As normal, it got a nice hop layer on the top. About tthree days later, the hops settled out but now it has what appears to be a foamy krausen layer. No bubbles in the airlock though. I give the carboy a gentle rock and it falls out and looks just like yeast as it falls out. A few hours later...its back. It has been like this for nearly ten days. I pop the airlock and take a wiff...smells fantastic.

Anyone ever hae a secondary krausen like this? Will it ever fall? Should I rack to the bottling bucket and bottle? Should I rack it to another carboy and leave the gunk behind?

Any help here?

-Todd

if the SG is still the same, go ahead and bottle. I bottled a 1.039 saison, stuck fermentation, bad mash, etc, it tastes delicious and no bottle bombs.

if it was whole hops then they would be floating on top. Pellets tend to break up and sink .

Actually, 1.020 for a double isn't bad. Rack it and if you get a clean transfer, bottle. You might want to cover the end of the racking cane with fine muslin to filter the hops out.

I have a weird little dunkelweizen de garde. It has little hops debris from my pelletted dry hop, but still tastes great.

I also had that funky krausen layer on top without any airlock activity. Personally, I was afraid, so I let it sit for a week and let it fall, however, I doubt it was really necessary. I'd guess it's just the yeast attaching themselves to whatever sugars and oxygen is attached to the tiny little pieces of leaves. I doubt it has much effect.

I will say however that I had a really bad medicinal off taste for the first week after bottling. I thought my beer was infected, but it mellowed quite well and is now very tasty.



Hope this helps.

I will probably let it go another week and then bottle. I thought about racking to another carboy and dry hopping another oz of cascades, but I don't know that will be worthe the effort.

Here are some pics:

Funk Layer/Krausen/Hops
[

After a Swirl


Don't know if that helps any....

-Todd

I had a stout that finished a little on the sweet side (I added half the hops at 15 till flame out) because I had thought that the recipe left my previous stout a little too "snappy" for lack of better terms. I wanted this one to be more on the malt and roast side. Well, I thought I would dry hop a half ounce of cascade and I bottled after it being in there for a week.

I am now pretty convinced that dry hopping will offer (to some extent) some bittering in addition to aroma. Maybe it's just percieved by the nose and translated to the palette but it definately had an affect.

Update:

Last night I checked the gravity for chits and giggles......1.015! The krausen is because it was still fermenting....albeit extremely slowly. Plan on letting it go another week and then bottling. I don't want it to go too long, as I don't want grassy flavors for sitting ont he dry hops for too long.

-Todd