Unintentional debut into lambic/sours, with pics

2 months ago I brewed a hefeweizen with this recipe. I splt the 5 gallons into 2 2.5 gallon beers. 1 I kegged up and and drank fresh, it was delicious, thanks Joe Dragon.

The second 2.5 Gallons I racked on top of 5 pounds of halved cranberrys. I soaked the cranberrys in starsan before I halved them. About a week or so later I opened to check progress and I saw a small pellicle. I hadn't pitched any bacteria so it was a wild pellicle. My first reaction was "Crap I was really looking forward to my cranberry hefeweizen, now ive got nothing" I could not bring my self to dump so it sat for a month. Meanwhile I know I need to just try it.

Last night I did and I am sure this will be a beer I talk about for years to come. I only hope I will be able to reproduce it in some way. I took pictures before I racked to bright tank:

what is all the white stuff covering the fruit?

Looks like mold.

Its not mold. Its a pellicle

See this thread: Pellicle Photo Collection

Thats the "krausen" of a wild bacteria

rtt121 said:

Its not mold. Its a pellicle

See this thread: Pellicle Photo Collection

Thats the "krausen" of a wild bacteria

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Not necessarily. Not all wild yeast or bacteria form pellicles. Not everything that forms a growth on beer is yeast or bacteria. Mold frequently grows on top of fruit sitting in beer, which is what you have. It is typically white. I'm not necessarily saying it's not yeast or bacteria, but it does look a lot like mold.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

Not necessarily. Not all wild yeast or bacteria form pellicles. Not everything that forms a growth on beer is yeast or bacteria. Mold frequently grows on top of fruit sitting in beer, which is what you have. It is typically white. I'm not necessarily saying it's not yeast or bacteria, but it does look a lot like mold.

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Now you have me worried. I am not so much concerned with what it was on top. From what I have been told and read, if it tastes good it can't hurt you. It tastes delicious.

You don't need to be worried unless it tastes bad. I have a cherry beer with some mold on top. It happens. You should have been able to rack out from underneath it.

I saw you transferred it to another fermenter, right? You may want to keep an eye out for additional white growth. If you have access to CO2 systems you may want to spray some CO2 on top of the beer as mold requires oxygen to grow.

I did rack to another fermenter. I was able to pull from the bottom and leave the cranberrys and mold intact on top. I picked up a good bit of trub from the bottom so the fermenter its in now was really just used to cold crash so I could rack beer off the top of the trub. I will keg tonight.