brewing with cacao nibs...infected?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Mohanbrau

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
Mar 27, 2011
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
Location
Stewartstown
Brewing a Belgian mocha stout, fermented 2 weeks in the primary. One week ago, I racked it into the secondary onto 4 oz. of cacao nibs packaged by Northern Brewer. Sanitized my secondary fermenter and siphoning/racking equipment as usual. I assumed that the cacao nibs, packaged in the oxygen-barrier foil pouch, would be sterile and ready for use. Was I wrong?

One week after adding the cacao nibs, I have this white powdery-looking mass floating on the surface of the beer. I've only brewed once before with cacao nibs (also from NB, in a foil pouch), and I don't remember anything like this. See attached photo.

Would appreciate hearing from anyone that recognizes whatever this is. Thanks.

20130119_130002.jpg
 
That looks infected to me - have you tried pulling a sample from it to see if it has any off flavours?
 
Infected my chocolate stout the same way. It turned out great. Next time I will soak the nibs in vodka first though.
 
Cacao nibs can be especially nasty due to the way they are processed in third world areas.
 
So how do you prevent this using nibs?

It may not have had anything to do with the nibs (did you flush the humongous head space in that carboy after you racked?) but soaking them in vodka, Everclear or Rum for a few days will pretty much kill any critters lurking within, as well as dramatically increase the cocoa extract.

It's what I do and I've never had an infection...but I also flush the head space when I do a secondary...

Cheers!
 
I had the exact same thing with a chocolate milk stout from nb using nibs. It did not seem to have any negative side effects and I even held on to some for several months to see if it would ever turn bad. Like others have said, I will soak in vodka next time.
 
Thanks, all. It sounds like it's an infection, but one that may not negatively affect the final product. I'll taste it when I draw a gravity sample before bottling and decide then whether to dump or keep it.

The enormous headspace is due to having only this 6.5 gal carboy available when I needed a secondary for this batch; all my other carboys were tied up. It never occurred to me to flush the headspace with CO2. The beer was still fermenting and pushing CO2 out of the airlock, so I figured it was purging the air in there by itself. Plus, by this point the beer is at about 6% ABV and pretty low in pH; I'd be surprised if anything floating in the air would infect it. I'm going with the theory that I should soak the nibs in vodka next time.
 
Just a follow-up for anyone who's still following this thread: I bottled about 2 weeks ago, carefully avoiding getting any of the white pellicle-looking-thing into the bottling bucket when siphoning. Added 16 oz of coffee cold-brewed from 3 oz. of roughly ground espresso beans to the bottling bucket.

It tasted awesome, though the coffee flavor overwhelmed everything else at that point. Either I used too much coffee, or it just needs to age and mellow for a few weeks. In any event, there was no evidence of infection in the flavor or aroma, so whatever it was didn't affect the outcome.

Following the advice of others, in the future I'll soak the nibs in vodka before adding them to the secondary.
 
Back
Top