My first infection, yay.

Ok, so I have a Belgian specialty ale that I brewed in August - A grand cru that I bumped up to 9% abv. Anyhow, I racked it to the secondary after a month, and then now after a month in the secondary it looks like it has an infection. I don't have any clue how or why it would pick up one at this point. I haven't even sampled it since I racked to the secondary. It has been about a week and a half to 2 weeks since I first noticed a tiny something floating on top. Initially I just thought some CO2 caught some proteins or something and brought em to the top. It now is spread to maybe 1/12 of the surface, and looks like a mini-krausen. Anyhow, from the pic below, can someone identify it? Any idea on how it might change the flavor? I'm bummed because I was really looking forward to this one

Post the recipe and Evan can probably tell you if it would make a good sour beer. There are others on here that sour but I cant think of them right now. However, you do need to have the right ingredients to make a good sour. Who knows, you might have a good beer yet!

How does it smell and taste? That really doesn't look like a pellicle to me- it looks like a big lump of yeast, like in bread dough. It sure looks weird.

Yeah, like I said it looks like a tiny krausen. I just can't imagine that fermentation would be starting back up at this point though.

The recipe was 8lbs of light lme, 2lbs honey. Coriander and bitter orange peel added, 4 gallon batch. I pitched 2 packs of Wyeast 3463 Forbidden Fruit onto it. I don't quite remember the hop schedule on it though. I recall that when I sampled it, the brew was very similar to Golden Monkey or DFH Raison D'etre. I suppose I should go take another sample and see how it's doing.

get it racked out from under that thing....Sour is one thing, but that's got tentacles!
if you're careful, you can prolly save 8/10 of that batch...if it isn't putrid already.

Ok, so, took a sample and actually took a reading this time. I'm a lazy brewer, so I really don't bother with readings for extract brews. Anyhow, the fg was 1.020, which is about what should be expected per beersmith. The beer smells and tastes fine, so, I'm thinking that the yeast decided to give another go at things. It just is odd that it waited so long to do so. The temp did go up a couple of degrees, so that may have triggered it, but really it is hitting attenuation so I dunno.

I guess I was worried since I really didn't expect more fermentation. The sample I took though was reeeeeeeal pretty. I'm glad I've been letting this one sit

BigKahuna said:

get it racked out from under that thing....Sour is one thing, but that's got tentacles!
if you're careful, you can prolly save 8/10 of that batch...if it isn't putrid already.

Click to expand...

Was typing as you posted this - the stuff underneath the floaties is just on the wall of the carboy, not hanging underneath, so no tentacles.

it's the better bottle. the infection walked right through the porous wall.

seriously, looks liek yeasties to me. racking stirred em up a bit most likely. see if it grows over the next couple of days.

Looks like regular yeast. RDWHAHB?

+1 on yeast

I don't think you have anything to worry about

Looks like major scratches on the side of the bottle, are those on the inside or the outside?

Maybe it's caused by that whole barley floating around in there.

Oh wait... that's on the outside of the bottle too...

Well it's been put into a keg for better or for worse. Those weren't scratches, the whiteness on the side was that stuff clinging on the inner wall in a very thin film. I'm just surprised something like this would happen after a month of being left alone in the secondary.