[outlaw17]

You will have to excuse the pic it was taken through the glass carboy help what is this floating in my secondary???  http://photobucket.com/beerpics



ETA - Mod edit to include the photo.

[Jimmy K]

You need to post that picture online somewhere and add the picture using that link. We can't see it.

[bluesman]

+1

You can use flickr, photobucket or a similiar photo sharinging site to extract the photo.

[Al Equihua]

You will have to excuse the pic it was taken through the glass carboy help what is this floating in my secondary???  http://photobucket.com/beerpics



ETA - Mod edit to include the photo.

wow, it shure looks of weird objects, are they colored in the inside?
How long they been in the secondary??,
i pass a similar experience in a stout while in secondary begun with bubbles and then this things

[majorvices]

First glance I'm tempted to say yeast, but the blue dots inside the white "islands" makes me question if it is mold, or just the poor picture quality. I've seen little white islands of yeast flocculate and float on top of the beer before. My suggestion is to hold it for a while and see if it grows. If it does, that's a bad sign. If it stays the same or the islands fall out then I would feel safe.

BTW: You are probably better off not using a secondary if you are going to allow that much head space.

[thomasbarnes]

I think it's mold. It's a common problem when brewing in the summer, particularly in the more humid parts of the world.

You might be able to save your beer by carefully racking the beer into a smaller container with much less head space, taking care to leave the mold colonies behind. (Mold is aerobic, so it's not going to grow if it doesn't have oxygen.)

[outlaw17]

Thats what i thought it was too just needed confermation but  it is very humid down here and i do live in a 120 year old house.

[thomasbarnes]

Thats what i thought it was too just needed confermation but  it is very humid down here and i do live in a 120 year old house.

That would do it.

Fortunately, if you've caught the problem early, the mold probably won't have had too much time to spoil your beer. Transfer or bottle it and it should be alright.

In the future, you can avoid mold problems by using conditioning containers which have very little headspace and blanketing the top of the container with CO2 after you've filled it.

Also, when transferring wort or raw beer, you can insert your siphon through a carboy cap in order to keep stray microflora down. (Illustration here: http://mikesbrewreview.com/how-to-siphon-beer/). If you've got a kegging system, you can use your CO2 tank to help push the liquid from container to container while keeping air out of your beer. Just keep CO2 pressure very low (5 psi or less) and make sure you've got a good seal on your carboy cap. wide electrical or masking tape works well for this purpose and comes off easier than duct tape.

If you can't siphon using carboy caps for whatever reason, at least make sure that the air is as still as possible when transferring wort or beer. Close off the heating or cooling vents, turn off the fans, shoo kids and pets out of the transferring area, and give the dust in the air 30-60 minutes to settle. Dust is your enemy here, since it carries mold and bacteria spores.

Finally, except when you're transferring liquid, keep your containers covered. Tinfoil or plastic wrap works fine, or just keep a stopper and filled airlock in the vessels.

[ajk]

If you can't siphon using carboy caps for whatever reason, at least make sure that the air is as still as possible when transferring wort or beer. Close off the heating or cooling vents, turn off the fans, shoo kids and pets out of the transferring area, and give the dust in the air 30-60 minutes to settle. Dust is your enemy here, since it carries mold and bacteria spores.

I use a fume hood that vents to the outside to create an updraft.  My assumption is any microflora get pulled upward and pumped out of the house, hopefully without causing chaotic airflow that might push them down into the wort.  Jamil Zainasheff has suggested using a candle to create an updraft.