Post your infection

It tasted a little off to me a first but I think that just in my head. A second taste seemed fine.



Here is the side of the carboy before racking if it helps.

jcarson83 said:

Ok, so no one want to play so I'll post a few more.

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Jcarson, my buddy has something that looks just like this going on in his cider. What is it exactly, and what did you end up doing with this batch?

That is mold.

Meet BRETTANOMYCES!

Pitched 6 weeks ago w/ standard english cider yeast.
Completed Ferementation in under 1 week producing a very dry cider.
Checked 5 weeks later, and Brett had totally taken over. Tasted, and it actually gives some good sour/tart tones to the cider.
Today...transferring to carboy...adding 5 campden tablets to kill of residual Brett...then filtering and back sweetening with Apple Juice concentrate. Hopefully it turns out well

THANK YOU for coming right out and saying what it is and not what it "could be"

Brett totally looks like scrumptious beer pimples.

I have a cider (3.5 gallons) that has been in secondary for about 60 days. I was trying to decide how I wanted to finish it and today decided to make Apple Jack. When I opened the bucket I found this:

I assumed it was a Brett pellicle. Right out of primary it had been very harsh, overly sweet and didn't taste good at all. The aging definitely helped. It is delicious, so I racked into a bucket and it is in the deep freeze right now. I plan to bottle the Apple Jack and sample some each quarter until it's gone.

I've marked that bucket to be used for nothing but infected fermentation.

I am 90% sure this is fine, but haven't seen anything else looking like this through all the pictures I have looked at and its my first lager.
Its a pilsner using WL American Lager yeast. It's in day 4 of fermentation first picture is day 3 and second is day 4

Also nervous because it smells good... nice Saaz character no rotten eggs

bg9929 said:

I am 90% sure this is fine, but haven't seen anything else looking like this through all the pictures I have looked at and its my first lager.
Its a pilsner using WL American Lager yeast. It's in day 4 of fermentation first picture is day 3 and second is day 4

Also nervous because it smells good... nice Saaz character no rotten eggs

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Looks like coagulated break material to me. It's normal.

bg9929 said:

...its my first lager. [snip] Also nervous because it smells good... nice Saaz character no rotten eggs

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I am on my second lager now. My first didn't start to smell like donkey farts until the second week, but that was on a different yeast. It will smell... you wait

I had a nice Krausen building after day 2 on my first batch now I have what I can only describe as Coffee Mold on top of it.

Looks something like this (Couldnt get a clear pic of what I am seeing)



The Krausen started as about 1/2" creamy thick head, with black tips on the points.

Now on day 3 the Krausen has started to fall, and this "mold" grew on top.

I am not terribly worried, as its my first brew and I have made a number of mistakes. I will be amazed if it is drinkable.. but I will try to drink it ..

The key factors I think are:

1) Its a Milk Stout

2) I boiled the grain through the whole process by accident so a LOT Of sentiment, even though I filtered a good 2 cups of sentiment out of it.

3) Pot was too small so I ended up with a moe concentrated wort (2 gal instead of 2.5) - It reached OG at 4.3 gal so I have 5 gallon recipe in 4.3 gallons.. I was hoping that mistake would cause it to generate a bit more ABV.

4) That all said the yeast is having a field day.. cap is burping every 2-3 secs.

My belief is that the growths could be overactive yeast going for the sugars and protiens that were ejected by the Co2 bubbles onto the Krausen..

What do you all think..?

Elbaryn said:

I brewed a sweet stout as my first batch last night, this morning I get up and this is what I see with my airlock happily bubbling along. Is this right?

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BTW before the coffee mold like infection it looked like this up to day 2..

This is a great thread, the more I search JUST this thread, the more I seem to be getting answers.

Seems other stout brewers are saying they got "yeast rafts" - am I to assume hat I am describing is just that..?

Also on a last note, should I go ahead and secondary this or just let everything fall to the bottom naturally (BTW.. I have at least a 1-1/2" of sentiment already on the bottom).

I think ur fine. Looks like yeast rafts to me. I would go ahead into secondary

This has been in secondary since December 17 then dry hopped. Been sitting in the bucket with co2 since. What do you think?

Savory, looks like yeast and C02.

Rick

Saison. Delicious

I know this post is 90 pages. I sat threw all of them looking to see if my vanilla porter resembled any of them. I did add 4 oz. of semi sweet bakers chocolate at the end of my brew (figured this is the oil sheen). Infected??? This is my second batch

Dirtheadz said:

I know this post is 90 pages. I sat threw all of them looking to see if my vanilla porter resembled any of them. I did add 4 oz. of semi sweet bakers chocolate at the end of my brew (figured this is the oil sheen). Infected??? This is my second batch

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Looks like left over krausen after it fell back down. Totally normal. As for the sheen, I can't say I've seen it before, but doesn't look alarming. Maybe hop oils?

I'm going to say that the sheen likely comes from the chocolate. No concern there that's a healthy brew.

Thanks guys, being a novice I have to say I was concerned. Didn't want to end up with non-controllable- exploding diaheria!

Dirtheadz said:

I know this post is 90 pages. I sat threw all of them looking to see if my vanilla porter resembled any of them. I did add 4 oz. of semi sweet bakers chocolate at the end of my brew (figured this is the oil sheen). Infected??? This is my second batch

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Got the same thing using cocoa powder on one of my stouts. You're in the clear.

OK 1st off.. I know I am good.. My krausen looks like a nice even 3/8" foam with light brown specks over it.. Kind of like the snow embankment beside a highway.. the airlock is just bubbling away.

Now that said, it would seem to be hard, if not almost impossible to get infected at this stage.. is that correct? Any "grossness" at this stage is probably just the krausen collapsing. At least as far as the primary is concerned.

CDGoin said:

OK 1st off.. I know I am good.. My krausen looks like a nice even 3/8" foam with light brown specks over it.. Kind of like the snow embankment beside a highway.. the airlock is just bubbling away.

Now that said, it would seem to be hard, if not almost impossible to get infected at this stage.. is that correct? Any "grossness" at this stage is probably just the krausen collapsing. At least as far as teh primary is concerned.

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Yes and no.. Yes, the active fermentation is good. But just because it's all well, doesn't mean that the yeast and some uglies aren't working in there together.

Generally, an infection is easy to spot.. White film/clumps. Sour taste, gravity dropping lower than expected, and then continuing to drop as it goes on longer. Vinegar tasting.. all of that can come on fast or slow!

98% of the time. If you were sanitary, it's all fine. You've got active fermentation, and for all reasons to believe, you will make beer.

What else can make it sour..? Noticed a twang of sourness to my Milk Stout, that said its very young (2 weeks). I think that one went well after I screwed up everything else.

My second batch was going good until yesterday, a nice clean Krausen, then a little dirt on top form the yeast.

Then today, when the temps got up into ale territory due to a heat wave here.. (Its an Oktoberfest that was doing well at 55 degrees) is now in the 62 range down from the 67 range.. But the yeast are ACTIVE.. its like looking at a hurricane, the current flows are all over the place, and to add to that a thick dark goo is starting to cover the Krausen.

The vent is really popping right now (every second or less) and has a sour smell to it..

Could I just be seeing real active yeast activity due to the heat and once its back down into the 50s it will be fine..? Or is this batch just going to be another "eh.. its Beer" batch..

Whats it like when bacteria start to take over..? I am on day 8 of fermentation.. so it should be getting close to peaking I would think. So this large amount of activity concerns me.

So here is a case study of sorts...

I made a really strong 8 gallon recipe and primaried it into my 7.9 gallon plastic fermentor bucket. So, I decided to correct what really is an overstrength after 7 days by splitting this volume into 2 sanitized glass 5 gallon carboys and then added 1 gallon of sterilized water to top off each 5 gallon carboy. I require this volume to account for the angels' share which will result from my oak bourbon barrel aging in a few months. I transferred to these secondaries on top of some star san foam - I don't fear the foam.

Fast forward one hour. I observed that the two carboys each took on characteristics of their own. Carboy A took on some really voluminous bubbles. Carboy B developed no such bubbles.

Fast forward 24 hours. Carboy A had enormous lacing on the inside of the carboy and continued bubbling away. Carboy B had a dense krausen, very lovely.

I postulate that Carboy A will not form a krausen because it captured no krausen during the transfer. The big bubbles likely were star san that was fed by CO2 bubbles, nothing more (i.e. not an infection). This is validated by Carboy B which did suck in some krausen during the transfer from the primary.

A question rather than an infection... I accidentally dropped a sheet of clean paper towel (the ones like paper napkins) to my brew pot right before I dumped in my immersion chiller. It was only like 2-3 seconds, but I picked it up. (The wort was still at a near boil temp.)

My fermentation started beautifully after 12 hours. Now it is going at a good rate, after 36 hours. When I sniff the airlock, the stuff in the fermentor smells nice and I do not get any foul odors.

Do you think I messed up with the napkin incident?

tarikapak said:

A question rather than an infection... I accidentally dropped a sheet of clean paper towel (the ones like paper napkins) to my brew pot right before I dumped in my immersion chiller. It was only like 2-3 seconds, but I picked it up. (The wort was still at a near boil temp.)

My fermentation started beautifully after 12 hours. Now it is going at a good rate, after 36 hours. When I sniff the airlock, the stuff in the fermentor smells nice and I do not get any foul odors.

Do you think I messed up with the napkin incident?

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You should be putting your I.mersion chiller into the boil with 10-15 minutes left on the boil. That's the biggest mistake I see and if that was the case anything the napkin left would be boiled.

Well, it (chiller) sat in the boiling wort for 5 minutes or so. I hope it was enough

We'll see what happens. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

5 minutes should be enough.. the thing boiling water and iodine have in common.. sterilization is almost immediate on contact. As for the napkin I wouldn't worry about it.

I surfed the first 15 or so pages of this thread and must say IT GAVE ME THE WILLIES, THE HEEBEEJEEBEES, & a reminded me of why I'm glad I rarely use a secondary as through the first portion of this thread again and again the post was, 'look what happened in my secondary'.

For the record I've had 1 known infected batch and 1 experimental batch where I open fermented that I suspect was infected. Sadly the infected batch, big bandaid/medicinal flavor, was a 10+% american barleywine that was going to be so fine! I was able to drink most of it while it was young and far from it's peak but that beat having to pour out the foul liquid of satan that it became a year later.

Hello all,


Working on my first brew and had a question. Looking over these pictures i cant tell if my foam looks normal or not. I know i could improve on my sanitation for my second batch but everything was cleaned and sanitized.

As well the bucket hasnt been opened since pitching yeast last friday evening. I'm most concerned with the black on the foam, more need some reassurance. There is no smell at all that i can tell, it's sealed really tight and the airlock has been going since saturday.

Thanks

Its fine have no fear!! Looks great.

Krausen starts as a nice white foam.. then gets black specky stuff on top (Yeast ejaculation), which will turn into heavy yeast goo on top of that and then it decays and falls into the fermenter. Thats' at least been my experience.

So have to say your probably just fine..

Okay thanks guys.


Thats exacly what its starting to look like. Glad to know its normal, and now i know what to expect so i dont post again

CDGoin said:

My second batch was going good until yesterday, a nice clean Krausen, then a little dirt on top form the yeast.

Then today, when the temps got up into ale territory due to a heat wave here.. (Its an Oktoberfest that was doing well at 55 degrees) is now in the 62 range down from the 67 range.. But the yeast are ACTIVE.. its like looking at a hurricane, the current flows are all over the place, and to add to that a thick dark goo is starting to cover the Krausen.

The vent is really popping right now (every second or less) and has a sour smell to it..

Could I just be seeing real active yeast activity due to the heat and once its back down into the 50s it will be fine..? Or is this batch just going to be another "eh.. its Beer" batch..

Whats it like when bacteria start to take over..? I am on day 8 of fermentation.. so it should be getting close to peaking I would think. So this large amount of activity concerns me.

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It's fine. Relax, and let it roll.

Yep.. thats what I figured.

Once it cooled down.. the fermenting slowed down a bit.. but still very active.

The heavier stuff on top fell through the white Krausen, and the Krausen returned to its nice white foamy look with a little crap on top.. Getting close to taking a sample just to see where the SG is.

Can y'all tell me how my first 2 brews look? The first is an Octoberfest and the 2nd is a Honey Weizen. I brewed them around New Years and this is the first time I peaked. Gonna be bottling on Sunday. Thanks!!

jonboygentry said:

Can y'all tell me how my first 2 brews look? The first is an Octoberfest and the 2nd is a Honey Weizen. I brewed them around New Years and this is the first time I peaked. Gonna be bottling on Sunday. Thanks!!

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They look exactly how they are supposed to. The real test is how they will taste.