Mysterious floaters

[Greg Lewis]

Brewing my first batch - a Northern Brewers extract with special grains Irish red ale. Brewed it on Jan 6 and everything went well. SG was 1.038 when it went into fermenter. Ferment went ok temp around 67 at peak. After two weeks, I took three separate gravity readings two days apart each and they were all 1.006. Now nearly 4 weeks in I'm ready to bottle but I have little floaters in the beer. I have several patches of krud floating on the top of the beer which appear to be the same stuff that is stuck to the side of the carboy from the krausen. But here's the strange part - many of those little pieces (which look like ground up cork) are falling slowly to the bottom, laying on the trub for a few seconds, then floating back up to the top. Not sure why that is happening but I'm don't want to bottle with those things suspended in the beer. Any ideas?

 

[jekeane]

yeast rafts that are falling hitting the trub and releasing co2 and getting sent back up via an air bubble is my guess.

either that or someone is messing with you and dumped sea monkeys in your wort.

 

[Greg Lewis]

I hadn't thought about sea monkeys but it does look a little bunch of workers carrying a load back and forth! What would you think about raising the temp a little - it's currently 62 according to the little cheap stick on thermo. Would that release some CO2 and maybe let these guys settle down?

 

[Hopsimus]

I agree with jekeane that it is probably yeast.
I personally wouldn't worry about it. The bottling process should clear up most of them, and any which survive to actually reach the bottle should settle out in the bottle.

 

[doogie]

When chilled they will fall down and stay there. Some people "cold crash" their beer before transferring to bottling bucket/keg to get clearer beer. It should be fine.

 

[Greg Lewis]

Thanks for your replies. I think I'll rack it to a secondary and throw it in the fridge for a few days then bottle it.