Does this beer look infected to you???

I brewed the Black ship Pirate Stout (10 gallons) all grain recipe from Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing which includes a late addition to the boil of crushed corriander seeds and allspice. I put the beer in the two primaries with a two large starters and it had some very vigorous fermentation for several days, racked it to my secondaries. All was fine up to here. In the secondaries I added more crushed corriander seeds and a week later the zest of an orange which I had soaking in vodka for a week. A day after the addition of the orange zest to the secondary I got a white sunstance which you see in the "Carboy right.jpg" pic attached. Followed by the growth of large white hollow spheres you can see in "Carboy left.jpg" pic attached. I have been trying to determine whether this batch has gone terribly wrong. If anyone can help that would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. The floating brown bits you see in the pictures are just the corriander seeds, it's the white part I'm worried about.

Yeah those bubbles look pretty menacing. It does not look good. Did you taste it?

What yeast did you use on this beer and what was you Original Gravity?

dmbGator said:

What yeast did you use on this beer and what was you Original Gravity?

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I used two Wyeast British Ale smack packs into 1 gallons starters each.
My OG was 1.072

gcdowd said:

Yeah those bubbles look pretty menacing. It does not look good. Did you taste it?

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Yes they do look menacing and that why i didn't taste it yet, I'm not that brave

Well, even if it is infected, nothing that infects beer will hurt or kill you. It'll just taste bad. Might as well have a sample and see what it's doing, no?

The big bubbles are definitely a sign of infection, called a "pellicle".

I think the large headspace in the carboy allowed enough air contact to let the infection grow.

Yooper said:

The big bubbles are definitely a sign of infection, called a "pellicle".

I think the large headspace in the carboy allowed enough air contact to let the infection grow.

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+1 Yooper on it like usual

so it's in both carboys?

When in fear taste the beer.

Doctor_Wily said:

so it's in both carboys?

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The pictures I posted are of each carboy. They both had the white floating stuff you see in the picture taken further back. Then one carboy grew those white spheres while the other stayed the same.

Yooper said:

The big bubbles are definitely a sign of infection, called a "pellicle".

I think the large headspace in the carboy allowed enough air contact to let the infection grow.

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I looked up pellicles and it says that it refers to the membrane wall of a bacteria. Can we discern from that what kind of bacterial infection I have?

As well, many posts are suggesting that I taste the beer. Is there any danger in doing so? And if the beer tastes fine, is it actually drinkable?

Definitely give it a taste, you may be surprised

KingFunk said:

As well, many posts are suggesting that I taste the beer. Is there any danger in doing so? And if the beer tastes fine, is it actually drinkable?

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Post #6.

whoaru99 said:

Post #6.

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I tasted both carboys before bottling and, aside from a strong espresso flavour that I wasn't expecting, the beer tastes great. Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.