My funk

Hey guys, about a year ago I decided to do a little experiment with the leftovers of a brown ale I had. I bottled some for a competition and threw in a packet of Roselare yeast to the remaining 3 gallons. After peeking in on it over the past year, its developed quite a funk. At first, there was a "normal" looking pellicle, and tonight I looked at it and saw a huge change. It looks like there's a solid brownish layer on it, as well as some mold. I was looking forward to taking a sample from it, but the look kind of scared me away. I thought I'd ask the pros here, so what do you think, should I take a sample or is it going to kill me?

(sorry for the poor picture quality!)

The Roselare blend will do some funky stuff. Since it's warming up this time of the year it may be reacting to the temp change. You can let it do it's thing for a while or take a sample. Drinking the sample shouldn't hurt you in any way. How does it smell?

It smells beautiful!!

Mosa said:

It smells beautiful!!

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That's a good sign.

Since it smells good you should take a sample, you don't have to worry about getting sick. You might have some acetobacter in there, but that is just a taste issue. Ideally you want to age sours without too much head space to reduce the amount of oxygen the beer is exposed to (acetobacter needs oxygen to my acetic acid aka vinegar). Hopefully the airlock didn't run dry. I've got a couple of 1 and 3 gallon fermenters that I use for this sort of split batch projects.

Hope the taste is worth the long wait, good luck.

Thanks for the info guys. I'll give it a taste this weekend and post the results.