Floaters!!

[Bamos6928]

I currently have a five gallon batch of Irish Red Ale in my fermenter and I am not sure about what is floating on top of it. I used SafAle US 04 yeast rehydrated and pitched at 67 degrees and had a very active fermentation which started about 12 hours after pitching. I had an enormous krausen and my beer got a little hot on day 2 (72 degrees) but after cooling with a fan the krausen started to get smaller. The krausen then stayed very small for the remainder of fermentation. Around day 9 signs of active fermentation stopped and the krausen layer had pretty much completely dropped but I had these floaters still present on top of my beer. Today is day 14 and they are still there. They are only in the top inch or so of my beer and they don't appear to be dropping. I did shake the fermenter a little a couple days ago to see if that would help but it did not. My question is will these floaters start to drop if I give it another week in primary? If they do not, what should I do on bottling day?

 

[RM-MN]

You fermenting beer dissolves a lot of CO2, much more than it can hold for long. After the ferment is complete the CO2 still comes out of solution as bubbles and some of the bubbles come from the bottom of the fermenter in the layer of trub and carry some of this to the top. We call them yeast rafts but they include trub too. Given more time there will be less CO2 bubbling out and you will see less of these floaters.

 

[seatazzz]

+1 to the excellent explanation above. Your floaters will drop out once you cold crash, or if you don't cold crash, once the beer gets refrigerated after bottling/kegging.

 

[brandonlovesbeer]

That’s all completely normal.

 

[mr_stout]

I have never seen that before. It does not look bad to me.

 

[Lefou]

I'm doing a fermentation right now with WLP029 and my wort looks just like this, only a different color.
It's been going since March 23 and is clarifying to some degree.
The majority of fermentation has finished and the foaming has subsided for the most part, but it isn't finished. Airlock activity has lessened (but if a light is put to the side of the glass carboy bubbles will be seen rising from the bottom) and the vigorous "snow globe" swirling effect of the yeast at high krausen has dropped, too.

Totally normal.