yep another first infection thread...

Sorry to bore anybody who has read 1,000 of these in their HBT-lifetime. But I just wanna check and make sure I'm doing this ok. I've seen the pictures of infections. Got a very small white spec like the ones that I've seen people like unionrdr describe as the broken ice kind. Plus a few of those strange "strong" looking bubbles. And the slimy looking layer on the top.

I know where it came from (I transferred to a "secondary" bucket, it didn't have too much headspace, and I added a bit of honey to the batch that was split in three in order to help purge the headspace. The first two are not infected, one of those I dry-hopped, one I added strawberries. This third one I completely effed up the lid when trying to cut the hole. It probably would've been fine, but I just thought I had to mess with it now. So yeah, awesome, got an infection bucket for the future). And I've got a plan as to where I'm going. The thing is I added lemon zest soaked in vodka to it, and I'm wondering if it might have helped to kinda stall the infection.

So I tested the gravity today. I would say it definitely smells like an infected beer. But the taste isn't bad, and oddly enough, out of the three experiments with this batch, I would say this one is my favorite. So I thought I could check the gravity again in a week, and if it hasn't gone down any then that could possibly mean that it did in fact stave off the infection from growing any stronger. Or is that too early to know? I suppose I don't mind waiting this thing out a while (although I am moving in July and don't know how that would affect it, if any). But it has no bad flavors right now, and if it's a bacteria that's gonna make it taste like **** at the end, I'll be a little disappointed. Or if it tastes OK now, then does that mean that it will taste fine in the end as well?

Well, if it tastes good to you, let it ride until the gravity's stable & bottle it up. Maybe put them in something at room temp to keep any bottle bombs from hurting anyone while they carb & condition.

unionrdr said:

Well, if it tastes good to you, let it ride until the gravity's stable & bottle it up. Maybe put them in something at room temp to keep any bottle bombs from hurting anyone while they carb & condition.

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yeah i thought about doing something like that too. but as far as bacteria go, will they eat right through the sugars? in other words, how long between gravity readings should i wait before i know it's actually stable?

Typically 3 days. But airborne nasties can also eat through long chain sugars that give color & flavor as well. But in my experiences, the usual infections can be bottled when you're sure the gravity isn't dropping anymore.

Bacteria will digest sugars that are undigestable by yeast. However, they do it much more slowly than yeast does.

william_shakes_beer said:

Bacteria will digest sugars that are undigestable by yeast. However, they do it much more slowly than yeast does.

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yeah, i was under the same understanding, that's why i asked how long between gravity readings to know they are done eating?

well I'd say the first thing to do is make sure you've got an acutal infection on your hands. Maybe psot a pic?

If you do have some wild bacteria taking hold of your beer, it can take weeks for the gravity to drop by a measurable amount. I'd say maybe if it's stable over 2 weeks you may be fine bottling, but even then you should be careful. The whole bottling process may rouse the bacteria to fermentout quicker in the bottles than they did in the fermentor. I'd probably use a bit less sugar than normal, but that's just me. I've had enough bottle bombs on my hands that I'm paranoid

ok, here they are. I've highlighted the small marks that I believe are the signs of an infection. Not to mention the filmy look on top, plus the fact that it doesn't smell quite right (not like the lemon zest that I added over a week ago either.) the one is a white spec that i've seen on infection threads on here, just usually they're much bigger. the other two marks highlighted are those types of bubbles i tried to describe. more like bubbles that got trapped under that film and couldn't pop, so just very durable bubbles. when i visited mexico city, they had these vendors on the Metro that sold these bubbles that had a little bit of elmer's glue or something like that in them. so they would actually stick to things and not pop until you intentionally popped them. that's what these bubbles remind me of. there were a couple more before that were bigger, but after moving it around a bit, and checking the gravity, i think they got popped.

Those spots look like bits of krausen, but the film might be the start of something?

Do you think the 'film' could be oil from the lemon zest?

jbrace1 said:

Do you think the 'film' could be oil from the lemon zest?

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it was there before i added the zest...

alright here's an update like 4 days later. still gonna wait a few more days to take a gravity reading, but the looks have changed a bit.

That big white bubble looks like the start of something.

Rack it to secondary or let it ride...

Jwin said:

Rack it to secondary or let it ride...

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it's in the best "secondary" i have. i completely effed up the bucket which allowed air from the outside in, which actually would've probably been ok (i added a bit of honey to get an actual secondary fermentation going on to purge of any bad air/oxygen), had i not tried to fix the bucket lid multiple times.

the good news is this is officially my intentional infection bucket. the bad news is that i'm undecided as to where i should/am going to go from here. the only thing i know is that a week from the initial FG reading i'm going to take another reading. if it hasn't moved i'm thinking of bottling it before i got on a 2 1/2-week trip (with all kinds of bottle-bomb protection of course).

Why not just leave it until after your trip? Its already contaminated and sometimes the wild stuff can take forever to make it to an actually stable gravity

If you have used that bucket for sours, then it's no suprise you got an infection. Sorry if I read that wrong but I've always been told that wild yeast fermentations should hav dedicated plastic for that matter

Riot said:

Why not just leave it until after your trip? Its already contaminated and sometimes the wild stuff can take forever to make it to an actually stable gravity

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yeah i was thinking about that as an option of course. but right now it doesn't taste bad. and i don't really know how low the pH has to be for the infection to be pretty ineffective. that's why i was thinking of bottling it before. it's only like 4L, though, so i guess if i let it sit and it ends up tasting like **** then i'll just dump it.

Jwin said:

If you have used that bucket for sours, then it's no suprise you got an infection. Sorry if I read that wrong but I've always been told that wild yeast fermentations should hav dedicated plastic for that matter

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yeah i might have made it sound like that was the case, but what i meant was that it will now start being my intentional infection bucket. unfortunately this is the first time i used the thing...

Another good thing that can come out of this is that I've been wanting to test out open fermentation, but was worried I would infect a bucket possibly. Now I can try it!