Smoker coughed on my beer? (gross!)

So, this is my first home brew. Please forgive me if this has been answered over and over again. I did a brief forum search.

Its about 3 days into primary fermentation and what started as white foam has turned into white foam, with what looks to be large spots of nasty green phlegm. It basically looks like a person with a very, very bad smoking problem cleared their throat and coughed all over the top of my fermenting beer!

I'm just curious if this discoloration is an infection, or totally normal

Im brewing a Rye American Pale Ale, Extract.

When I smell the air lock release, it smells like beer! A little more potent than what I smelled when brewing it on the stove.

Thanks!

Sounds normal. The green phlegm is probably hops residue on the krausen.

It's called a krausen and it is a normal part of the fermentation process, it's actually yeast. The green parts are bits of hops. It's ugly but perfectly normal.

Here's one of mine.

Ah, thank you!

Very much appreciated. I'm going to research 'krausen' now

I've been wanting an excuse to post a couple of my krausen pics, to give a (somewhat) more clear view than Revvy's pic:




I've got a few more krausen pics on my Flickr

caphector said:

I've been wanting an excuse to post a couple of my krausen pics, to give a (somewhat) more clear view than Revvy's pic:

Click to expand...

That looks thoroughly disgusting.
It makes me wonder how beer ever got brewed in the first place.

-a.

i beg to differ, i think that krauzen looks beautifull.

I agree, that is a great looking krausen

ajf said:

That looks thoroughly disgusting.
It makes me wonder how beer ever got brewed in the first place.

Click to expand...

You know you are a brewer when you see that nasty krausen and you instantly get either (a) thirsty, or (b) jonesing to break out the mashtun.

I will keep this thread going, here is a pic of my Pliny clone.....ton of hop residue!

Thanks for the pics, caphector. That's what mine was looking like, and I just wanted to make sure that was normal. Thanks to everyone that responded.