First Time brewer here. Decided to go a little bold on my first brew but within the realm of reason. I did a partial grain of 2.5 munich and 2.5 vienna mallt with ~7lbs pilsner DME. My OG was about 1.070 and after 4 days i was down to 1.010 using a yeast starter of safale us-05. I sanitized like crazy and and took precaution in everything. I racked to a secondary after 5 days and then let sit in the carboy for a week before dry hopping with a nylon sack and glass marbles that i boiled and sanitized before cramming in. I have noticed a growth forming on the surface of my beer now 5 days after adding the dry hops. The smell coming from the fermenter is not sour or anything off to me it smells like a great DIPA. Should I be concerned over this i plan on bottling in a couple days. Pics cause it happened (the weird thing in the middle is the bad filled with hops marbles didnt work too well) http://imgur.com/a/3Dj0W
Hard to tell from pictures. Could be yeast. What does the beer taste like? If it tastes OK (and by OK I mean not awful, as it will not necessarily taste good at this point) then there is nothing to do now except bottle and keep your fingers crossed. RDWHAHB.
Did you use pellet hops? If so, it may simply be a collection hop residue. At this point, the aroma can be very informative. It seems to be telling you to not worry about it. Fyi, a starter with dry yeast is generally neither necessary nor desirable. Rehydrating is all you really need to do, and even that is not a universally held truth.
mass in the middle is hop bag. will taste when I get home today. I used both pellet and whole hops. could the temp be a factor as well It has been at about 75 degrees which I know is high but im working with what I got.
“ ..could the temp be a factor as well It has been at about 75 degrees…” Given that primary fermentation is complete, the temperature of 75 degrees should not be an issue. Cheers!
Hops residue. Bottle when fermentation and conditioning complete. I noticed you said the gravity had dropped after four days. I strongly suggest that you don't mess with your beer after only four days. I have a rule of "don't touch it for two weeks, at least." If you want to ensure fermentation is complete by taking gravitometer readings, fine, but take the first one two weeks after brew day, and the second one two or three days after that. It will virtually always be finished (unless you're brewing something weird or you have a stuck fermentation or something). Also, the yeast will have had enough time to clean up the byproducts of fermentation this way, and you'll have better beer. If you really must rush things, do a 11-12-day/13-14 day testing schedule. You can get on a two week brew-to-bottle schedule and be fine. I was doing it this way for a while because saturdays were brew days, so two weeks worked well for me. But don't push it below that. Also, secondaries are generally unnecessary, at least in the opinion of many of us here. They are primarily useful for beers that require them, which would be fruit beers with fruit in secondary, big beers that require longer conditioning (use glass for these, btw), other beers that need longer conditioning on specialty ingredients, or anything that requires being in the primary considerably longer than about a month. I'm currently drinking beer that was in the primary for over a month*, and it's just fine. *this was due to an inability to brew for more than four weeks. totally sucked not being able to brew!
thanks to all who responded to ease my nerves I bottled last night and had a taste and it was delicious!
