Mold: Help me rest easy

So i'm preparing my ingredients for my boil. Mash is about done and i haven't sparged yet. I am using a pound of piloncillo in my brew and i unwrapped the brick to find a nasty spot where it was at one point moldy. It looked dead, so i cut out the affected area and weighed it. Oddly enough, it weighs exactly 1lb, which is all i need. It doesn't smell weird or anything.

So, my question is, will this be okay to use?? I'm using it regardless, but i just need someone to confirm my thought process.

I am doing a full boil. That would kill off any nasties, right? I should think so.

I figure, it IS a saison, so any funky stuff would probably be acceptable so long as the nasty stuff is all dead.

Help me out here, please. :rockin:

I was a cook for many years. The "old school" way is to cut it off 1" past the infected area. This has changed to do not use it all because mold actually infects everything not just what you can see.

Zamial said:

I was a cook for many years. The "old school" way is to cut it off 1" past the infected area. This has changed to do not use it all because mold actually infects everything not just what you can see.

Click to expand...

I hear ya. If i wasn't doing a full boil, i would toss it right out.

My logic is that if it were truly brewed in a Belgian farmhouse, they would not have wasted it and would have used it anyway.

Zamial has a good point but I would think the boil would kill any lingering funkyness

The boil will absolutely kill off any lingering live mold, and most likely kill off spores, but regardless it won't grow in your beer. The problem with molds is not that they'll infect your beer, but the toxic metabolites they leave behind. Unfortunately, said toxins can be pretty heat stable. Here's an article on aflatoxin heat stability in brewing. Dry read, but basically after an absurdly complicated 70+min step mash and 90min boil, they still measured between 14-28% of the added aflatoxin B1 and ochratoxin A (nasty liver carcinogens). That's not to say that you've got a toxigenic species there, but fungi are a difficult bunch to identify, so unless you're absolutely sure what you've got it's a good idea to leave it alone.

As homebrewers we go to so much trouble to add specific ingredients in known quantities to produce consistently good beers. Why add a complete unknown?

Either way, good luck with your brew.