Possible issue with hops in the secondary

I have my first attempt at an IPA in the secondary carboy. the instructions called for adding 1oz of cascade pellet hops to the carboy when i racked over to the secondary. its been a week since i did that, and i have noticed that the hops that have stayed on the top seem to have been “reacting” im not sure what to call it. im hoping its not an infected batch, im usually a pretty clean brewer. this morning it looks like it has formed a cake on top of the batch, and their are bubbles forming in it. has anyone experienced this before? any ideas whats going on? and should i dump it, or just keg and see what happens? thanks for any help.

First and foremost, I’d never dump a beer unless I was 100% sure it was completely ruined or poison. It’s never worth wasting all that time, effort and money. Yeast want to make beer, and in the end you’ll almost always have something drinkable.

Dry hops do have a tendency to mat up at the top of the fermenter. The bubble are probably just CO2 escaping. No biggie. It will probably be fine.

Thanks for the reply. i was planning on kegging it and hoping for the best. at least now i can do it with a little more confidence:) thanks

When I do dry hops (either pellet or whole), I put them in a bag with 2 big stainless steel nuts that I’ve washed and sanitized. This drops the bag to the bottom of the vessel and thus exposes all sides of the hop pellet or cone to the beer. Yes, it can get tricky getting the bag out, but this prevents hop goo getting into my siphon. You could also sanitize a bag and put the end of the siphon in that as somewhat of a filter.

I’ve seen the same thing happen with hops in a bag - goo or film forms around it and I thought something went wrong, but it’s perfectly normal.

I’m sure just putting hops in the fermenter works fine, but I have noticed an improvement by submerging a whole bag.