lots of stuff floating in secondary

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greg75

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I brewed some Irish Red Ale last Sunday with a kit from LHBS. This was my first brew which involved steeping grains before the boil, and all went great. It was also the first time I used hops in a boil (previous brew used hopped extract). Anyway, it all went good, except for the fact that the recipe was actually for a 5.5 gallon brew, and I topped off the fermenter to 5 gallons. So, it'll have a bit more bite to it. I'm not too worried about it.

Anyway, another change in this brew from my first was that I used liquid yeast this time (White Labs Irish Ale). Fermentation started about fifteen hours after pitching, and everything was going perfectly. Around Wednesday primary fermentation subsided. Thursday evening, I decided to rack to secondary. I wanted to wait until Sunday for the 1-2-3 method, but with time constraints, and the fact that the volatile activity had already passed, I decided to rack a little earlier.

Boy, was I surprised at the amount of trub at the bottom! There was easily three times as much in this brew from the previous one. I assume the hop pellets contributed to this a little, but it seems to me that pitching the White Labs yeast with the high cell counts was the main contributor to the excess trub.

After racking, I noticed a lot more stuff floating around in the secondary than my first brew. Mainly, it was flocculating yeast, but there were also some flaky debris present. I think that may be remnants of the hop pellets that made it through the racking process, but I'm not sure. Is it normal to have a lot of floating material present during secondary?
 
Dont sweat it. Most of it will sink to the bottom to form more trub, especially the hop parts. After racking, there's going to be a lot more stuff floating because you're essentially mixing it up again. It'll turn out, no worries.
 
mine had little mold cakes floating around on the surface... I am going to taste it tonight, its been in the bottle two weeks now
 
I had little seed looking things form on my last batch. I cannot figure out what they are unless they are some sort of Calcium deposits from using too much Gypsum. I think that is what they are. I think that is what happened. As fermentation continued the PH of the wort changed and some of the gypsum came out of suspension and formed little seed looking clumps. They are not yeast.
 

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