Infection pre-boil

So, I tried to break up brew day into 2 smaller days.

So I mashed my grains, and stored by wort in a sanitized carboy. The intention was to boil the wort down, and pitch the yeast today.

Well I'm ready to boil today, and the carboy has a thick head of krausen!!! I was going to accept a little, but it is an inch thick.

Do I boil or dump?

Depend on how much of it has fermented. You might not have enough sugar left to even bother. If it has mostly fermented out your BU:GU ratio will be off and boiling would just drive off the alcohol produced.


Hard to make any kind of judgement call without numbers.

Its lacto and probably some other "stuff".

What you have essentially done is a pseudo sour mash.

Depending on the style and your taste buds you could go ahead and make a sour beer.

Otherwise dump it....and next time before you try and reinvent the wheel you may want to do a little more research.

Xpertskir said:

Its lacto and probably some other "stuff".

What you have essentially done is a pseudo sour mash.

Depending on the style and your taste buds you could go ahead and make a sour beer.

Otherwise dump it....and next time before you try and reinvent the wheel you may want to do a little more research.

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You know for sure it's lacto with no pictures, no information? No, no you don't.

And no this really isn't anything like a sour mash.

And plenty of people mash one day and boil the next, but most of them will bring the wort to a quick boil to sterilize it maybe do some research of your own.

To the OP, take a gravity reading, asap, if it's fermented a long ways I would say it's not worth saving, you have no hops, no nothing besides a sugar mixture and some sort of infection. If the gravity reading is not too far removed from what it was when you put it in the carboy, boil it up, hop it, chill it, yeast it and cross your fingers that the bugs didn't change the flavor profile too much.

Um, are you sure it's krausen and not... oh, i don't know ... simple foam maybe from moving the wort about or from temperature change or ... i don't know ... sugars disolving. I mean I suppose an infection can kick up a fermentation but that's certainly a *very* uncommon occurrence, isn't it?

I guess I don't have any advise, except take reading, but so far we all seem to be taking it for granted that in infection and fermentation did occur. Should we be making that assumption?

woozy said:

Um, are you sure it's krausen and not... oh, i don't know ... simple foam maybe from moving the wort about or from temperature change or ... i don't know ... sugars disolving. I mean I suppose an infection can kick up a fermentation but that's certainly a *very* uncommon occurrence, isn't it?

I guess I don't have any advise, except take reading, but so far we all seem to be taking it for granted that in infection and fermentation did occur. Should we be making that assumption?

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My thoughts as well.

BigFloyd said:

My thoughts as well.

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+1 to this^

I know that when I transfer from BK to fermenter, I aerate quite a bit and end up with a fairly thick layer of foam on top of the wort that eventually settles down. That was my first thought when I saw this, but again without pictures it should not be assumed by the OP that this is an infection.

Sorry, I wasn't sub'd to the thread.

For entertainment, attached is a picture. I think I'm just going to dump it. It was a 3.5 G scaled-down Centennial Blond.

Cost of grain was about $7.

Thanks for all the replies.

I did this another time (mashed one day, boiled the next) and didn't have problems, I guess the house jumping to 80 degrees yesterday might have accelerated it a little.

That's actually pretty interesting. If it was me, I'd probably let it ride and see what I made.

CastleHollow said:

That's actually pretty interesting. If it was me, I'd probably let it ride and see what I made.

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YUP YUP... unless it is your only ferment vessel, I would be inclined to put it somewhere and see what you end up with.

Considering there are no hops in it, I'd say it's unlikely to be drinkable.

Upon further inspection and re-read of the post, I missed the part about it being hopless and not boiled.
Hmmm...... are you up for an experiment???

If not, then dispose of it.

I still think it looks like foam and not krausen. I mean that has to be a pretty damn *big* infection to ferment that much overnight, doesn't it.

Take a reading before you dump it.

woozy said:

I still think it looks like foam and not krausen. I mean that has to be a pretty damn *big* infection to ferment that much overnight, doesn't it.

Take a reading before you dump it.

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I agree to take a reading because you could be right and I don't believe in tossing beer without knowing for sure why you are tossing it, however,

There are hundreds of billions of bacteria on that grain pre boil, typically when you think of an infection you think of a few cells that took off despite the yeast pitch and the fact that the wort is sanitary because of the boil. This is different because the sugary wort is not sterile as it was never boiled, it's teaming with hundreds of billions of bacteria and wild yeasts, think of it like pitching a couple hundred billion yeast cells, it takes off over night.

Is there a reason that one couldn't take a small amount of wort (made from malt extract or from the carboy) and boil it with hops to make a "hop tea" that could be added back to this for the bittering? It might make an interesting beer. It also might make a dumper but the additional cost would be minimal.