Do I have an Infection?
 

None of my beers have looked like this before, I am guessing that it is an infection. If so I am gonna be pretty dissapointed because I was really excited about this beer. Let me know what you think. Thanks

I used this recipe

Black Pearl Porter

The only changes I made was added some toasted unsweetened coconut (in a grain bag) and a little bit of chocolate to the boil at about 20 minutes.

I sanitized with StarSan. I made a starter which did not seem infected and took off with a pretty solid looking fermentation within 12 hours.


ALL GRAIN - 5 Gallons
8.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
2.00 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L (30.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM)

0.50 oz Fuggles [4.52%] (60 min)
0.50 oz Fuggles [4.20%] (2 min)

0.25 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)

1.00 cup Malto-Dextrine (Boil 20.0 min)
4.00 oz Lactose (Boil 15.0 min)

1 Pkgs London Ale (Wyeast Labs #1028)


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 13.00 lb
Mash In Add 4.06 gal of water at 170.5 F 158.0 F 45 min
Mash Out Add 2.50 gal of water at 206.7 F 175.0 F 15 min

Here are the pictures I took.

Gnarly. How's it taste?

yea. I would say that's an infection.

I took a small taste and it is not terrible, it smells a little off though. I just switched to StarSan from Idophor, I have had no issues with Idophor in the past.

Weird. It doesn't look like any infection I've seen. It looks like fats. I don't imagine you added enough coconut and chocolate to yield that much fat into the beer, but maybe it's possible.

That was kinda of what I was wondering. I only added a bit of chocolate maybe 4ozs., I added 10ozs of toasted unsweeted coconut to the mash and 10ozs coconut to the boil. Maybe just transfer into a secondary and give it some time.

Was it ever a homogenous sheeted layer oer' top of the beer or has it always resembled glacial bergs?

That is pretty much what it looked like when I opened it up to pull the sample.

That coconut had a mountain of fat in it. I suppose it could be that. I agree, though, that looks really odd. It's not like anything I've ever seen.

It looks like maybe the fat got pushed up to the top of the krausen and then when the krausen fell it broke up and was left floating on the beer. My first thought would be to scoop that out to prevent it from being a landing zone for infections but I'm not really sure what would be best in that situation.