Mold....need some advice

Long story short:

I have a chest freezer that I use as a lagering chamber/cold crashing chamber. This summer w/ the temps in my basement exceeding 75F I decided to use it as an ale fermentation chamber.

I decided to brew beer for my wedding. 10 gallons of brown ale and 15 gallons of pale. Brewing is done and all 5 ferm buckets are in the freezer. A few days ago I dropped the temp to 32F to cold crash w/ the intention of using gelatin tomorrow and kegging a few days after that.

I checked on my buckets this evening to find over half of them have mold growing over them. Now, I'm not terribly concerned since each bucket should theoretically be sealed but I am concerned about opening them up to add gelatin then closing them for a few more days.

Does anyone have experience w/ this type of problem? Any advice is greatly appreciated. My wedding is coming close and I do not have time to brew up 5 more batches.

was the mold there before you turned it down?? 32F the first tiing that poped in my head was frost bite?? i could be wrong thought

I don't believe that the mold was there before turning the temp down although I could be wrong since it's been a about of week or so since I 'checked' on the fermenters.

Nah, beer can tolerate all the way down to about 30F w/o too much worry. I lager my lagers around 32F.

i have not done lagers yet but i thought you said it was on the outside of the buckets when i cold crash i get frost no the out side of my buckets from the temp change at first I thought it was mold until i took it out of the freezer.

Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying. I'm not sure if it's frost, I'll have to check later when I get a chance.

I'd skip the gelatin and go straight to the keg. IMO you'll have mold spores all over the place and most likely they'll get in to your beer when you pop the lids of the fermentors. Most molds are aerobic and require O2 to thrive, purging a keg should rob them of the ability to contaminate.

My chest freezer gets mold in it sometimes (at ale temps, anyway). I keep a spray bottle of bleach near it for that. I suppose starsan might be good too. Just don't get bleach in your beer!

Turned my keezer into a fermentation chamber as well and was surprised my some black mold on the lid and on the sides of the bucket. Definitely going to put in a fan in the keezer now.

Spareparts....thanks, I was leaning in that direction as well. In denial for a little while since I really wanted to have 'bright' beer to serve since this will be most invitees first experience w/ homebrew.

Thanks again.