mold!? or something else?

Please see the picture below. This white looking substance is apparently growing on the hops and peaches that are floating on the top of my beer inside my primary.

It looks a little too white to be mold but it is on top of the fruit and hops which is where it would be growing.

is it fuzzy hairy? if so, you got mold!

it does not look fuzzy/hairy. it has a more wet/slimey look to it. i know that doesnt sounds any better but it certainly didnt look fuzzy or hairy. when i took this pic, it had been in the fermentation bucket a week. i popped the lid off to have a tase. it tasted fine as best as i could tell. it certainly didnt taste sour or anything like that. this is a Bells Oberon clone and its my first all grain attempt.

i think i am going to transfer it to a secondary this weekend and let it sit another week before i bottle in hops to let it clean up a bit. i assume i will just siphon the beer from under those hops and peaches and into my secondary. IF it is mold, then what? pour it all out? ughhh....

Looks like a big glob of belly button lint to me. If it tastes like beer and not someone's stank belly button, you should be good to go

dgez said:

Looks like a big glob of belly button lint to me. If it tastes like beer and not someone's stank belly button, you should be good to go

Click to expand...

... vomitacious

If it smells like toe jam or the aforementioned belly button lint, that's bad. If not, then drink up.

I guess an easy way to tell would be take some fresh bread and put some of the white stuff on the bread and seal it in a container...if it starts growing mold on it then it prob is

than to me it's prolly dried yeast. thats what happend with my dandelion.. sum hung out on top after the krausen fell and dried..

its mold. the same white mold you get in wine with a floating fruit cap. you just have a hop cap.

i poped the top again last night to have a smell and another look to be sure it wasnt fuzzy. its doesnt smell like toe jam or dirty belly buttons (although "Dirty Belly Buttons Ale" might be a good name for a brew). it smelled like super duper strong beer. the scent of alcohol almost knocked me down.

thanks for all the insight. i think i'll just syphon below that floating hop/peach island into a secondary and let her sit another week before i bottle.

Just because it's mold doesn't make it terrible, and it can be mold without being fuzzy (the fuzz is often mold's reproductive stage), and just because it's mold doesn't mean it can grow on bread ( just like lions don't eat grass, plenty of molds don't eat bread).

When fruit is submerged in the wort, it's protected from mold. Any fruit exposed to air is susceptible to mold. This is one good reason to add fruit to secondary -- fermentation isn't intense enough to bouy the fruit up so high. To add to the confusion, a yeast pellicle sure looks like mold the first time you see it (and yeast is, after all, a fungus), but really is actual yeast doing strange and mysterious yeast things.

It's a little hard to see what's going on in the pic, but I think your plan of secondary is a good one. I wouldn't necessarily stir the fruit into the beer, which it sounds like you're not doing
One comment from Radical Brewing that I just read -- the weird mix of sugars in fruit can make it hard to predict priming levels, and extended primary (watching for any fermentation activity) can lower the risk. Mosher says that his only bottle bombs ever came from, I think, a heavily cherried beer primed at normal levels...

good info helmingstay. thank you.

do you think it would be a bad idea to pour all of the contents currently in this bucket (my primary) through a strainer and into my secondary? or would that stir things up to much? im going to transfer this into a secondary this weekend one way or another. the fact that it is in a 'true brew' bucket makes it difficult for me to tell just how low i can dip my syphon into the beer without getting into some trub on the bottom.
another thought i had was to use a sanitized slotted ladle and scoop the floating hops/fruit (with funky "hop cap" included) up and out of the bucket, discard it, and then syphon into my secondary and add a bit more pureed peaches and then let that sit a week and then bottle.

Jesus, i love this blog. its so helpful and informative!

How'd the transfer go?
Only thing I'd say -- wait waaaaaay longer than a week between adding fruit and bottling, unless bottle bombs you like...