Help! Crusty beer.

Hi everyone, I've been all-grain brewing for two years now and I finally came across a situation that I just can't figure out. Since i've found so many answers be searching this forum, I thought I would see what you all thought.

I brewed a double batch of pale ale about three weeks ago and split it into two separate buckets for fermentation. Everything went as planned during primary so i went ahead and racked to new buckets and dry hopped for two weeks at 65 deg. I wanted to make sure that these batches were as clear as possible, so i decided to rack them to new buckets again before cold crashing for a week or two. The first beer is completely normal, but the second bucket has this white crust on the surface. The crust is thin and breaks apart easliy and pretty much looks like an ice sheet breaking up in the arctic.

Both batches used the same yeast starter (white labs CaliIV) and hops for dry hopping. The only difference was I used sanitized cheese cloth to hold the hops in the batch in question.

The crust has no taste and the beer tastes a little off, but not enough to really identify what is wrong with it at this stage.

Any thoughts?

Sounds like an infection to me. Can you post a pic?

here is a pic.

An infection is my first reaction, but since i've never had problems with this in the past, I didnt know what to think.

Looks like yeast rafts to me but it's hard to tell for sure and it is a little weird. It doesn't look like any of the infections I've had though. Let it go and lets see but I'm guessing you fine.

Infection! At least the other half is good.

Rack out from under it and package it. Drink it fast, but save a few to age in the bottle for 6 - 12 months and see how it tastes...

I racked it, and started to cold crash. I guess I will see if it tastes ok in a week or two when I keg it.

Stauffbier said:

Rack out from under it and package it. Drink it fast, but save a few to age in the bottle for 6 - 12 months and see how it tastes...

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This is what i would do. I recently had a clump of multi colored mold in a bucket. I siphoned from under the mold and the beer was fine.

mikeysab said:

I recently had a clump of multi colored mold in a bucket..

Click to expand...

That might even count as a serving of vegetables for the day!

I've had this white infection on the top of my beer, the beer actually turned out really good. I carefully siphoned below the crust in to another carboy before bottling and it never came back.

This is definitely an infection- don't know who thinks it looks like yeast rafts. Anyway, you can keg this beer, but DO NOT BOTTLE IT, that is bad advice. On the off chance you got something super attenuative in there, you could end up with bursting bottles. If it still tastes fine and you can keg, go for it- get it cold fast and drink it soon. If it already tastes a little sour or funky, you're sort of out of luck but you could let it sit for a year or so and see if it turns into something drinkable. IF it tastes terrible, it's probably not going to get a lot better.