Is this supposed to be happening?

[Jason8usmc]

Hello home-brewers,
After two successful batches of Mead, I decided to try brewing in the big leagues.
I'm following the recipe and directions here. I put everything together and pitched the yeast last Friday. Since Thursday I've started to check the gravity to track the progress of the yeast and to know when it is "done".
This evening I cracked open the top of my brew bucket to take another hydrometer reading, and I was greeted with a horrible sight...

...staring back up at me.

It's a solid, almost jelly-like mass. Last time I opened it up (3 days ago) it was foaming up and krausening real good.

Is this supposed to happen?

 

[ChshreCat]

Looks pretty normal to me. Krausen can take some nasty looking forms. Don't worry about it and you can probably cut back on opening the lid. I check my gravity once a week and people think I do it excessively.

 

[Jason8usmc]

Is it going to fade back into the brew as it ferments? or is that something I need to be scraping off before I bottle?

 

[ChshreCat]

It'll fall to the bottom of the beer. The reason it suddenly looks different now is because it's starting to collapse. Give it a couple more weeks and it should be pretty much gone. Maybe just a few little clumps of yeast floating around that you can avoid when you rack.