What's in my beer? Brett? Aceto? Lacto?

So I put ten gallons of my oktoberfest hybrid in my crawlspace and when I checked on the two buckets a month later they looked and tasted fine.

Another two weeks later, and uh oh... I messed one of them up.

It had a dusty mold culture growing all over it.

I let it ride for another three weeks and checked again, it was thin in the mouth but had a possibly pleasant twang in the making.

Three weeks later to show another friend and the culture had kind of collapsed and another had taken over.

You can see on the edges the dusty culture and in the center you can see forming something different. Sort of a milky glass texture.

It stills smells funky but good (not vinegary) and the last taste was interesting if somewhat reminiscent of finger nail polish.

At any rate, here are the pics. If it looks familiar, please let me know.



This is the top shot. You can see the new stuff in the center and the old stuff breaking down on the sides.





This is the old stuff on the side. It had a dry dusty finish to it.





Finally, here is the new stuff. It looks sadly kind of like pictures of Acetobacter that I've seen online, but also not totally unlike some pictures of Brett. Maybe even Lacto?

The other question that depends on the first is... what to do with it? If it's Aceto, I need to find some sort of popcorn sutton use for it. But if it's Brett, I'm happy to wait a few months and dump raspberries into it.

Please advise.

I've seen lacto contamination that looks like that. The taste of nail polish remover also makes me think lacto. I did an experiment using wort in mason jars and added raw grain to some and pre-cultured lacto and the wlp lacto culture looked like that. One of the raw grain jars smelled like acetone too.

Hmm... I think you might be right.

I looked up more pictures of Lacto and it looks familiar to what it looked like earlier.

So considering that it had a decent ferment before the infection, and that it doesn't taste bad yet... What's the recommended plan if it's Lacto?

How long do I wait before it's ready and how can I tell if it's headed in the wrong direction?

I've heard six month-ish for a Lacto. Should I toss in some oak or fruit, when should I do that?

If it tastes okay now you can drink it quickly. I'm of the school that says if a beer doesn't turn out, gets contaminated, etc you dump it. But that's just me and I'd never tell anyone to dump a beer.

Accidental infections/contamination rarely taste good, but if you have carboy space you could get a pack of wyeast lambic or roeselare and hope that dominates the wild contamination. What was your grainbill?

You could also try hitting it with a couple of campden tablets. I've never had great luck with that, but have heard its worked for other people. You'd have to repitch the yeast because it should knock out everything living in there.

You can blend it in the boil with half of another batch.. do a 90 minute boil and throw half the infected one in at 45 and get it to a boil for at least 15 minutes and then you can do late hop additions too.. with a rolling boil that long you keep 50% of the alcohol if I remember, maybe more.. did a mini sour mash this way and kept allot of the lacto sour but lost some of the tart.. it also didn't infect any equipment down stream with led me to do more like a stout with a gallon of spontaneous fermented 3rd running(lacto) that added just a hint of sour.. did a gallon in a Saison.. even threw in some of my bottled sours into s cream ale that turned out great (that one almost tried to boil over on me, not gonna do that again)..

Edit:Oh, I call them my psudo sours

Hmm... So you don't think this will work out on it's own at all eh? It doesn't taste horribly sour right now, just kind of funky.

Edmanster, your blending idea sounds interesting. I guess I'll give it a couple of months and either give that a shot or give if it my popcorn sutton friend.

It's impossible to just look at a pellicle and figure out what it is. Maybe acetobacter is the exception but it doesn't look like an acetobacter mother.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

It's impossible to just look at a pellicle and figure out what it is. Maybe acetobacter is the exception but it doesn't look like an acetobacter mother.

Click to expand...

I agree, but you can take an educated guess.

I did an experiment with several strains of lacto in mason jars. They either looked like spider webs, chunky white "icebergs" or yellowish powder floating on the top.

Brett seems to form large (quarter/nickle size) bubbles after the krausen has dropped. I haven't done too much with brett yet.

I have pictures of my lacto experiment that I really need to post, along with smell/tasting notes.

I think it will but to me if it's lacto only sometimes it seems one sided and not complex and strong when it takes a hold. You could do the roslair blend that was mentioned but your putting more lacto into it and hopeing the pedo can show through. Let it ride.. I'm sure it will be fine.. my buddy got an infection in his fat tire clone and was going to dump it and I thought it was awesome so I took a couple bottles and grew the dregs wich ended being lacto

Well hmm.... I drew a sample last night and gave it a taste. It smelled really good, but tasted like water. It was utterly flavorless which I wasn't expecting at all. Is that symptomatic of anything in particular?

On more interesting news, I have a batch of saison that has this pretty white stuff growing on it. There were some nice big bubbles until I scooted the carboy for a picture. Judging from other pictures I've seen, I thought this looked like Brett, but I was curious what you all thought.

I think I'm just going to store it until January before I do anything to it. Maybe I'll toss in a bunch of frozen cherries or raspberries. What do you think?

That looks a lot like an acetobacter infection, especially with the nail polish remover smell. Acetobacter produces acetic acid and ethyl acetate. Ethyl acetate smells just like acetone. Sorry to tell you, the acetone smell will not go away. I've been sitting on a beer for 3 mos. now and no change in that smell.

It looks like there's an acetobacter mother floating in there. Can you take a picture from the side, particularly of the top part of the beer?

Thanks for the replies, I really appreciate it.

As time has gone on, this has turned into a serious and really sad situation. I've brewed a fair amount and never had an infection until now.

We moved in March and I took a break from brewing over the summer and then started up again in August.

Within the span of a few weeks I did 10 gallons of OctoberFast (ale), 10 gallons of a Peach Saison, and 10 gallons of a Cream Ale.

One by one, when they hit two to three weeks they all started doing funny things.

The OctoberFast was the first victim in the original post that now has this growing on it. It actually smells really good when you open it (a bit nail polishy, but when I tasted it last week it was like water.



Close up of the OctoberFast....




Then Peach Saison came down with the weird white coating in last weeks pictures. That particular growth has fallen and now just looks like this.





The cream ale didn't have anything weird growing on it, but I crashed cooled it right away. It's in line to get carbed, but it tastes a bit cidery and different from the last time I did it.

My current theory is that something got into my racking cane since it was the only thing that touches all of the beer cold and it's unlikely that all of my buckets and carboys were sanitized improperly for the first time in my brewing career.

The only other option is that the house is haunted by ghost who's a real son of a *****.

On an interesting side note... After I had already had all of the other batches in their primaries, I started messing around with trying to catch wild yeast. I spun up a starter with some juniper berries and then pitched it into a 1 gallon batch (didn't mix any regular equipment).

That started growing this... It's pretty, different from the others, but still sure as hell not yeast.





Here I sit crying into my store bought beer with a cursed brewery... *sigh*

I didn't realize there was a bag floating in there.

Has your sanitation process changed in the new house? If your water supply different at the new house? I'm wondering if the ph in the water is different and you're not getting a good reduction in ph with starsan or increase with idophor, whichever you use, based on the ph of the water. If it doesn't reach the correct range for whichever sanitizer you use, it does no good. Also look at the environment where your fermenters are open, whether it is post-boil, pre-fermentation, post-fermentation, or during packaging. Is there maybe an air vent blowing air (and other crap, those vents are not clean places) into the beer when it's exposed? I would definitely look at your equipment and make sure it all gets a good cleaning before you brew anymore but check that you are hitting the right ph with your sanitizer first. Are you reusing any of that yeast? Using yeast from a prior source of your own? The infection may be coming through yeast you washed in the past.

Hmm... That's really good thoughts about the ph of the water. Here in Fort Collins the water is generally very soft, practically distilled so there was never any ph buffer to prevent the ph drop. However, we did switch water districts in the move so that's very possible.

We've also moved into the garage for brewing so that might be an issue as well since cooling and racking takes us about 30-40 mins. I'll start covering the vessel after we drop below 150 and rack into another covered vessel.

How long should I wait before I make the final call about whether or not these might be interesting flavors? 3 months and taste? Or should give them up now?

From my perch, the first two are acetobacter...last one is brett (which is a yeast ).

I feel your pain with the infection woes, but you have glass fermenters, which is a great start. For the acetobacter, my first guess would be fruit flies...if one gets in your wort, you'll have acetobacter. Luckily, once you see that thin film, you can bottle it up and it shouldn't impact the flavor. Acetobacter needs oxygen to grow, so if you get it in the bottle, it won't be able to do too much damage.

Look at the upside, at least you didn't have multiple infections, like brett & lacto & acetobacter. So you're sanitzing well enough, just something in the post-boil path is messing things up. Best of luck!

If you're in Fort Collins you're ok with the water supply unless you're drawing off a well or a pool of water out back, but it doesn't sound like that's an issue. Obviously that's one town that knows it's water is going in beer and not to have anything too out of control.

I'd guess the garage is the contributing source unless there's a nasty infection somewhere hidden in your equipment. Garages usually aren't the cleanest places and if you're brewing with windows or the door open there's probably all sorts of nonsense caught in the breeze. I'd try brewing and covering the kettle at 180 and keeping it covered until you pitch. That's going to eliminate any reasonable risk that stuff is floating on the top of the kettle and then drifting in to your cooled wort when you move the kettle. If you're still having infections, the problem is further down the process.

If you're getting nail polish smells that's not going to get better. You should concede defeat and dump those. The ones that have gotten watery aren't going to get better, either. Some bacteria and yeast can break down the starches and sugars left behind that give beer it's flavor which will give you a watery, flavorless beer. That too will not go away. So I'd dump those, too. Sometimes you'll get funky flavors from wild yeast and bacteria that will go away but acetone and an undesirable breakdown of the beer are two things that don't disappear.

The cream ale is tangy but drinkable. Depending on how it tastes next week, I'll probably go ahead and drink that. The OktoberFast and the Saison however are on the block. I'll taste them all next week as a last ditch effort and then probably use them for popcorn sutton purposes if they're not any better.

The little one gallon test batch, I'm probably just going to let that ride until January and see what she tastes like. I'm hopeful that it will be a fun brett tinged local sour.