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chefmike · 10-02-2009, 02:16 AM

So I brewed a batch.

Pitched it on a cake. I did not really see it ferment, I was busy.

all is well....

then, four weeks later:

I say to myself, "Self, that ain't right." There was no head on this last week....

What to do? what to do? It smells fine... kind of...

So then a friend comes for a beer. He works in a lab. I show him... take a sample with a glass wine thief (and then boil it). He takes it to test.

wormfishin · 10-02-2009, 02:21 AM

And..........

**homebeerbrewer** · 10-02-2009, 02:22 AM

Looks fine to me. It could be late in starting since you pitched onto an existing cake. I'd give it some time, check the gravity, then decide whether it's infected.

Tripod · 10-02-2009, 02:23 AM

How long before the lab buddy gets some results? I'd love to know what he finds...

Good Luck!

-Tripod

chefmike · 10-02-2009, 02:30 AM

Sorry... hitting the chat too hard.

He emails me:

Quote:

Good news is there's no botulism toxin in what I have, but I would seriously recommend NOT drinking it. There are way elevated levels of mycotoxins, which I know yeast can produce, but not in these quantities. I mean I feel like you ether backed the truck up to a Bavarian ye-old contaminated grain farm, or blew the fungi in on purposes. I mean I could pick out zearalenones from the noise of the other mycotoxins, and that's never good. I haven't even been able to rule out ergoline alkaloids. I doubt their present, and I'm running a few tests over the weekend to confirm, but your beer is way more alkaloidic than it should be.

From my plating and DNA tests I think you have at least three separate fungi presences in addition to yeast. Can you let me know what you seeded it with? That will help me pull out the noise.

In addition to the fungi you have between 4(very complex)-19(very simple) different bacterium. This is from the plasmid separation and growth pattern of the various colonies. It's unlike to be 4 because that would be a very complicated set of bacterium (like MRSA), and if I had to guess I would say the real number is around 9-11.

The chary on top? On a simple visual inspection of the beer under a standard light microscope (@50x & 100x), one can clearly see many happy single flagellum protozoa running through your beer like police in a high school drinking party.

My conclusion is that at some point, and probably for several hours, your beer has been exposed to air. I can't really pull out if anything was there before, or which organisms came first (other than the protozoa were unlikely the first on the scene), but you got a whole little ecosystem up running now. That would also make sense as to why we didn't see botulism: there was probably too much oxygen.

Do you want any further analysis, or are you happy with this. When I have time I plan on making a Picasa album entitled "Life in Mike's Beer" and I'll send it to you all.

AMDG,
Q

chefmike · 10-02-2009, 02:32 AM

The botulism question arose from the batch being no chilled... I never saw ferment happened and we were debating wether yeast would grow in the presense of botulism toxin... it was ruled out though. Since it is not in there, I will test it for SG now and see what we have... none of these nasties really scare me like botulism toxin.

Parker36 · 10-02-2009, 02:33 AM

Haha, that is awesome, BE sure to keep us updated with the albums

chefmike · 10-02-2009, 02:34 AM

chefmike · 10-02-2009, 02:35 AM

chefmike · 10-02-2009, 02:36 AM

The album is named "Top 10 Things in Mike's Beer that will Kill you"

Quote:

I would do more, but I only have so much time. The ones that aren't all green or red were taken with natural transient light (yes one of the fungi is bright orange on it's own). The green and red ones were taken with blue and green florescent light (green will activate things that florescence red, blue will activate things that fluoresce green). Magnification range from 40-5000x