Pliny Kit - possible infection - advice appreciated

[ciderWI]

We're brewing a NB Pliny kit. Started 1/31 so it's about four weeks old. OG was 1.068, 2 x Wyeast 1056, racked 11 days later at 1.013, settled out to 1.011. No issues at all, and the beer was clearing and the top was clear when we did the first dry hop on 2/22 in a nylon hop bag. Four days later when we added the second hop bag, there's a bunch of cottage cheese looking junk on the top, and it's gotten worse. Some of the cloudiness is probably due to me agitating the carboy to circulate the hops.

We were planning on kegging this tomorrow - now that doesn't seem like a good idea. Any ideas on what this is and how to deal with it?

 

[BeefsBeer]

due to me agitating the carboy to

i think you've just resuspended some yeast

 

[ciderWI]

i think you've just resuspended some yeast

That would be the best case, and maybe that's the best assumption for now. My current thinking is that we will postpone bottling until next weekend, pull the hop bags mid-week, and if the stuff doesn't settle out pretty quick, it might be worth doing something to clear it.

 

[midfielder5]

it doesn't look infected. I would drink it asap though, because it should be drunk fresh. Yours is 4 weeks old.
I try to keg my hoppy beers in ~ 14 days, and do the last DH in the keg.

and there is too much headspace in your secondary. Get a 5g BB for secondaries- I don't secondary IPA's any more tho.

 

[Yooper]

it doesn't look infected. I would drink it asap though, because it should be drunk fresh. Yours is 4 weeks old.
I try to keg my hoppy beers in ~ 14 days, and do the last DH in the keg.

and there is too much headspace in your secondary. Get a 5g BB for secondaries- I don't secondary IPA's any more tho.

I agree. Bottle it and drink it for heavens sake!

If you're going to use a carboy for clearing (a 'secondary'), make sure you have limited headspace to protect the beer. The longer it sits in there with all of that headspace and opening it for samples and dryhopping, the more vulnerable it will be to contamination. It looks great now- yeast clumpies and break material- so I'd bottle it right away!

 

[ciderWI]

and there is too much headspace in your secondary. Get a 5g BB for secondaries- I don't secondary IPA's any more tho.

I agree, and we gave it a shot of CO2 before we closed it up. Unfortunately, I couldn't see a way to get the hop bags into my 5gal (small neck), so we used the big mouth.

Based on the what you guys have said, I think I'll pull the schedule in and pull the bags now, bottle mid week.

thanks guys.

 

[ciderWI]

Update - after pulling the hop bags I put the carboy in the kegerator to cold crash it. That cleared it up in a couple of days. We bottled a twelve pack with priming sugar and racked the rest into a corny. I hope there was enough yeast left suspended to carbonate the bottles.

I'm not a fan of overhopped beers, and it's a hop monster. My brother-in-law who we brewed this for thinks it's great. Comparable to Pliny great. So another successful brew - thanks for the advice.