8 months in secondary and lookin'...uh...

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spooky:p

I brewed up a vanilla porter last August and never really liked the flavor of my little tester tastes, so I sort of kept passing over it in the carboy in favor of bottling beer I had hopes for. Well, the time has come to bottle.

First a comment: It looks like a zit farm. Nasty looking bubbles rising up out of a film of some sort. I may croak if I drink any of it.

Second, a question. How much dry yeast should I add to the bottling bucket? I'm thinking half a pouch should do it. Thoughts? Do zits taste good?
 
First a comment: It looks like a zit farm. Nasty looking bubbles rising up out of a film of some sort. I may croak if I drink any of it.

memento.jpg
 
Fair enough. Here's possible infection pron:

IMG_2965.jpg


I'm thinking CO2 bubbles, but not too sure. There is both vanilla bean and vanilla extract in there the entire time.
 
Wow dude....thats deffinatly something funky....

I had those exact same bubbles on my hefe that turned out to be infected. Surprisingly though it really worked with the hefe, but I've got to drink it quick bc I don't think it's going to last long. Plus, the last one I opened was a gusher..

Taste it before you dump it........
 
Dude that looks really nasty. I would not drink that unless you sterile filter it. Im not even sure i would drink it after that.
 
Yeah for real....

Theres nothing that can live in beer that can hurt you......take a look at some of Landhoney's pics.... :D
 
It may not be too bad, but then Im going to go ahead and dial 9-1.......

let me know when to hit the other 1


lol jk
 
I had a beer that had crap on top that looked similarto that minus the zits. I skimmed the top and bottled it. What doesnt kill you makes you stronger!
 
Alright, the tasting is complete.

I first sterilized my wine thief, LOL.

I poked at a bubble just to see what would happen. It sort of ripped open and collapsed. Yummy stuff.

I grabbed a sample and put it in a glass, but there was so much of the film stuff along that I couldn't even try to get a clean shot at the beer beneath. I played around with the wine thief until I had a clean hole through the film and got a decent sample.

The beer was fine, other than it tastes as bad as ever. I think the recipe was a dud or I screwed it up, which is possible since it was one of my very first AG batches. No off flavors other than a distinct alcohol burn. No off scents.

The film is sort of like a plastic that comes apart into tiny little pieces. I'm wondering if it is maybe something to do with the vanilla. I don't know, but it doesn't seem to hurt anything.

Bottom line, don't dump beer that looks like that.
 
I've had something similar before in a couple of my batches but it was whiter.

Seems to happen more in summer, I think it's just mould. I kegged, carb'd and drank it. No problems.
 
That looks like mold to me too...I would have stuck my racking cane through the skin on top and pulled the beer from underneath the skin...leaving plenty in the fermenter to avoid disrupting and sucking up the skin.
 
That looks like mold to me too...I would have stuck my racking cane through the skin on top and pulled the beer from underneath the skin...leaving plenty in the fermenter to avoid disrupting and sucking up the skin.

That is what i would do too.

Also on a side note, seems like you need more bottles if you're worrying about bottle allocation.
 
+1 on the mold. Probley got a few airborne spores, and you gave them enough time to do something.

The only thing worse than dumping 5 gallons of bad beer is drinking it.
 
Whatever it was (it almost looks like a pellicle formed to me), learn from it and move on. At least you tasted it!
 
I decided to bottle a little of it and dump the rest. Having a bunch of beers under my belt now, I know what's in there that I don't like. The black patent malt basically took over. Plus, the alcohol burn I think is probably from brewing when I didn't have AC in the house during a very hot stretch of weather. This one was just doomed from the beginning.

With four beers that I expect to like on the way, I need every bottle I have for them. I hope to be kegging by the end of summer and not worrying about that little issue any longer:ban:

With this, though, I have learned to never dump a beer based on appearance alone.
 
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