Is this mold?

Alright, as you can see, I am new to the forum and this is my first batch. I did some searching about mold and it seems all first time brewers are concerned they have mold but mine really looks like mold to me.

Here are the details:

Brewer's best kit. Followed directions and sanitized everything for a couple minutes. I had everything in the primary for 7 days and my final gravity looked good but I wanted to practice using secondary so I transfered to carboy with autosiphon last Saturday and put on the airlock. It is now Monday night and I noticed these small white circles on the surface. Since pictures are going to be the only way to possibly help, I have taken some and circled with blue. Please let me know what you think this is? Should I toss it and start over? Really, more importantly to me if this is mold, I want to know why this happened and what I need to do to prevent it next time. Thanks.





Dave

Welcome!

I don't see any pictures, so I'm not sure what is going on. Can you post a link to the site where the pictures are hosted?

Aha! I see the pictures now. I don't see any mold though! Where do you think there is a problem?

DSC01279.jpg picture by Dsrugis - Photobucket
DSC01280.jpg picture by Dsrugis - Photobucket
DSC01282.jpg picture by Dsrugis - Photobucket

Dave

Look closely, I have blue circles on the surface. I may be just paranoid but it looks like mold to me.

Looks to me like you're being paranoid, just like I was a year ago. Looks okey-dokey to me.

RDWHAHB!

RDWHAHB

RDWHAHB!

seriously dude, just drink a beer in relax. it will be fine!

Those look like normal yeast flocculations(sp)

EVEN IF it WAS in fact mold, there isnt a whole lot that can be done.
EVEN IF it WAS in fact mold, you could always rack below and potentially have an awesome brew.
EVEN IF it WAS in fact mold, you arent going to be able to tell much about the beer unless you get a foul odor or wretched taste (when it has finished conditioning in the bottles etc)

In other words RDWHAHB! Im sure your beer will be fine!
-Me

I don't see any mold either. Mold is like white and growing and fuzzy.

It looks like you have some weird yeast clumps, that's all.

I agree relax and have more than a few homebrews. mold is usually more than just spots on the surface, it forms long chains kinda like seaweed where the bacteria forms groupings in geometric patterns. when its just spots its usually falling krausen and nothing else.

Sounds good...Either way, I was still going to let it go to see what happens. I will keep you updated for the next couple of days. Looks like this is a great resource with a ton of activity. Will definitely keep poking around here.

Thanks everyone.

Dave

What's RDWHAHB??

dsoto75 said:

What's RDWHAHB??

Click to expand...

Rodney Dangerfield Would Hassle A Huge Banana.

DSrugis- If it makes you feel any better- I know what you're seeing-i've seen similar "anomalies" in my secondary carboy. If you look closely at them, they look nothing more than tiny air bubbles-possibly yeast floccuations as someone else noted. How long has your wort been in there for? You should probably notice them disappear as it gets closer to bottling...

dsoto75 said:

What's RDWHAHB??

Click to expand...

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Just keep an eye on them. From looking at the pics I'd say it's just fine bubbles from the CO2 degassing, or yeast/protein floaties. If they start growing in surface area and develop "threads" going down into the liquid, you'll want to carefully rack from underneath them.

It's just fizzy yeast colonies buoyed up to the surface by CO2...or as we call it "Nervous new brewer Paranoia"

It's fine and common for stuff to come up to the surface float around for awhile, fizz (in the case of yeast), and fall back down, no surface is ever 100% clear.

Wait til you dry hop your first time, if I hadn't been shown a pic by someone on here as a warning I would have thought something was wrong as well.

ak47clown said:

DSrugis- If it makes you feel any better- I know what you're seeing-i've seen similar "anomalies" in my secondary carboy. If you look closely at them, they look nothing more than tiny air bubbles-possibly yeast floccuations as someone else noted. How long has your wort been in there for? You should probably notice them disappear as it gets closer to bottling...

Click to expand...

3 days as of this morning. Noticed them for the first time last night.

Dave

DSrugis said:

3 days as of this morning. Noticed them for the first time last night.

Dave

Click to expand...

That's pretty much on par for the timeframe for stuff to get kicked up to the surface do to new co2 production from racking over.

It's fine, don't even be surprised if you get a new krausen forming, that happens sometimes as well.

Here's a suggestion for other new brewers like myself...
I resolved from my first batch to not even look at my primary for 2 full weeks. And then, after racking to secondary, I don't even look at it for 2 full weeks.
Haven't seen anything worrisome in 3 batches. Now I'm not gonna worry in the future, either.

shecky said:

Looks to me like you're being paranoid, just like I was a year ago. Looks okey-dokey to me.

Click to expand...

But now since getting almost TWO brews under his belt since he started brewing a year ago, he is much more relaxed now....

Thanks for everyone's help. It definitely was not mold.

I ended up bottling on Saturday and brewed a porter on Sunday. Can't wait to try my first brew. The porter is looking really good too and the airlock is going like crazy. Should be a nice brew with a 1.058 OG.

Dave