apple peach cider scum

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Atek

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I have an apple peach cider that finished up and was racked about 2 weeks ago now. I used Nottingham on it and it had a pretty noticeable banana ester smell to it. Not repulsive or anything. I haven't tasted it yet. Once I racked off the pulp I only had 2.5-3 gallons left and placed that in a 5 gal carboy. Blanketed it with CO2 and let it sit until I could get more applejuice to top up with and let the fermentation of that finish up. Well, now I have a really thin skin layer on top, my guess is its a type of mold. Any one know what I am talking about? If so did I ruin this by leaving too much headspace for too long? Could I possibly rack from under that layer and top up with juice after that or am I pretty much outta luck?
 
Here's some photos of this.

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Crap.... I just checked my plum cider as well and it too has a thin film. Its not as bad, looks more oily than the peach. But both are the signature murky and developing a film on top.... One was fermented in a plastic carboy, the other in glass. I did not have any free carboys at the time of racking and I needed to get them out of the suspended pulp so they were racked into my 5 gal pot through a nylon sock. New sock and cleaned pot for each batch, but then they were racked back into their own carboys that were sterilized with bleach. My pot however is aluminum which has was turned. I can feel the turnings and am pretty sure its impossible to clean adequately at this point. I've done some reading and everything says to toss all plastic involved. Does this include my racking cane and hose, what about bottle brushes, brew spoon and lees stirrer?

I don't feel like I can trust any of my plastic... :(
 
I think you might actually be okay..

Care to taste it? How far along is the batch? I recently had a batch get the "bubbles" on top, the thin murky film, but the batch was chilled, and bottled and literally drank so far that people loved it. I got RAVE reviews from my beer. I have a porter that had something similar, think it was my bucket, as both were in the bucket right after each other.. I tossed the bucket, but kept everything else and haven't had a problem.

Do a bleach bomb on the siphon and whatnot, and perhaps if they shared the same home, bomb those out too if they are plastic. Could be fine I think!

Taste the cider and see whatcha think.. If it's fine, keep on going and rack out from under it.
 
So I called my LHBS and that's exactly what she recommended. She'd actually never seen a lacto though and had to look it up. She got the same info I did, literally we were reading the same posts online over the phone. She wasn't sure she agreed with the northernbrewer thread. She offered to take my plastic and make a batch in it to test her luck on it. I'll take her up on that out of sheer curiosity. So tonight I tasted both, I have a plum cider that was simply home cut and juiced plums that I pitched the yeast into the juice after hitting with campden. The other is a peach-apple cider that is about 50/50 home cut and juiced peaches and apples that I did the same thing with. Needless to say the ABV was pretty low. I didn't take a reading but the ferment finished up pretty quickly. I tasted it tonight, the plum is pretty sour, but was a bit sour to begin with so that makes sense, no vinegar taste or smell at all. Had to bust out the apple cider vinegar to remind my nose just in case. I tasted the peach as well and it was not really sour at all, really flavorless, very watery. That may just be my pallet though as I am more accustomed to heavy body mead. I racked from under each into clean glass used 1step this time for the cleaner instead of bleach and changed my practice of holding my sanitizing solution in the sink and used one of my brew buckets instead. After racking I topped up each one with apple juice (roughly 2.5-3 gal each) and added sugar to bring the abv up, shouldn't be more than 8% each. I don't mind a bit more alcohol and I figured it might slow the nasties down. I re-pitched some more Nottingham. I will sanitize my stuff normally and take it to my LHBS and see what happens with her brew.
 
Doesn't sound like a bad plan.

If it's getting sour, and more watery, then it could be lacto. That'll dry the beer out, and continue to eat away at it until it's lacking any body. But like you said.. could be you not used to what you have there.

Just play it out.. Lacto doesn't like cool temps, so when it's done, chill it and drink it sooner than later and I'd be you will be more than fine.
 
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