Festival Razorback IPA - Fermentation/Hop Sludge?

Hi guys,

New here and I've only just started to get back into brewing following a year out so it's good to join the brewing community again :thumb:

I'd like to pick your brains if possible, I picked up a Festival Razorback IPA kit having brewed their Porter and Golden Stag successfully a few years back (great drops!)

I put this on around 11 days ago (7th august) and added the hops on the 14th after a day's delay in fermentation starting - the kit says to add after 5 days but to my mind it wasn't there yet.

Now, the question I have might be a very common one so apologies in advance! I've used Hop pellets before including on the other Festival kits mentioned above but have not experienced what I seem to have at the moment which is a layer on top of the beer which reminds me of a yeast cake.. It does appear to have a greenish tinge, is this the fabled 'Hop sludge' that I've read about? Or is it something more out of the ordinary that I should be looking at fixing?

I've attached a couple of pics below.

(Ignore the rogue hop pellets these were an additional 12g of Chinook pellets that I decided to add as something of an improvisation, sadly I didn't notice the almighty barrier sat on top in time)

The kit came with a 75g Mixture of Centennial, Simco and Summit

We're now 11 days in and the blighter is still bubbling the airlock happily with no signs of slowing. I'm hoping this slows down by this Thurs as I'm hoping to bottle before the weekend, incidentally the first time I've bottled a brew also!

Cheers for reading

Aquila1701

Leave it another week! It might sink, it might not, but those hop additions sound fantastic! I bet it smells great?

Just use the bag thingy to filter the brew when syphoning to bottles/keg. After 2 weeks secondary in warm, get it somewhere cold (probably your living room if the weather forecast is right!:lol:) so that the bits sink and start compacting.

It's gonna be good I can feel it!!!

Looks good to me and just to let you know - you are in for a treat!! The razorback is the best kit I've made by miles. Absolutlely love it!! The hops settled at the bottom after about a week in my case. Enjoy..

Thanks guys.

Looking forward to trying this in a few weeks. Cheers for the heads up on the hop front, was a bit worried it had gone a bit wrong for a moment!

Interested to see what the additional few grams of Chinook does too.

We recently moved into a new house that has a garage away from the house so think that should do the job of keeping the bottles cold nicely :thumb:

Will let you know how things go in a few weeks! :-D