First all-grain after a few weeks - funky looking infection?

I did my first all-grain BIAB a few weeks ago (Anonymous IPA from HBT!). It was a bit of a brutal brew day - ran out of gas mid-boil so it was longer than normal.

I'm getting ready to rack it to secondary so I can dryhop, open up the fermenter & see this:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/822/allgrain.jpg/

In my year of brewing, I've *never* seen this stuff floatin' in my buckets. It looks like chunks of all-grain bread without crusts almost, and is upto an inch thick.

Beer tastes like beer though, if a little bitter (which was expected). Sorry for the crummy camera phone pic!

Am I infected?

Nope. Looks like yeast rafts. Did it suddenly warm up? Or did you knock the bucket around?


Also, what yeast strain is it?

WLP001. Probably fermented warm at around 72 - I just finished a ghetto fermenter for my next brew

I moved it from my office onto a kitchen counter this morning so I could rack it...

I do not think that is an infection, looks like non-ferment able carbohydrates and or proteins, rack out from under it and leave as much as possible in the primary container.

I will say, the wort was pretty cloudy from what I remember.

BrewerinBR said:

I do not think that is an infection, looks like non-ferment able carbohydrates and or proteins, rack out from under it and leave as much as possible in the primary container.

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Actually didn't think about that.... it does kinda look like break-proteins....


fenners: Did you get a full boil? How quickly did you cool your wort?

Racked it over without any problems, left a fair amount of liquid behind to give it room - ended up with 4 gallons or so in my carboy I reckon.

Looked like almost no trub on the bottom of the container compared to my normal results. Very weird.

fenners: Did you get a full boil? How quickly did you cool your wort?

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Did get full boil but it took a while to cool -25 to 30 or so minutes. First time doing a full 5 gallon boil with a large half keggle-pot. What's the consequences of these proteins then?

+1 to looking like proteins. I'm not too sure personally what effects they may have other than possibly having a cloudy looking brew. I use a sanitized 5 gallon paint strainer in my Ale Pail when pouring the chilled wort from the kettle to the pail before pitching the yeast and it filters out most of that break material if you want to try that on the next brew FWIW.