Moldy beer

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abrdnck

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Here's the story -

I had a batch of California Common which I was fermenting in a bucket in a closet. I left it alone for about a month, and then took the lid off to check gravity a few days ago. Tonight, I opened it to check gravity again and noticed mold along the top of the krausen line. It was definitely mold - blue, fuzzy mold. It smelled like beer, with some mold on it. It looked like a bit floating on top of the beer, as well.

I figured I should dump it, but maybe I've read too many of Revvy's optimism threads and decided to just bottle it anyway (SG has been stable since I checked 3 days ago). I carefully put the racking cane down through a part of the surface that looked particularly unmoldy, and left maybe 3L in the bucket when transferring to the bottling bucket (figuring that the mold is probably mostly surface). I tasted a sample of the beer, and it tastes not bad (considering it was warm and flat). I threw out the bucket that I fermented in.

My thinking is - chances of my beer turning out to be drinkable is slim, but better than if I dumped it. Worst case scenario is that I wasted my time bottling, and even then I got some practice bottling which is valuable at this stage. I'm a bit nervous about bottle bombs, but I have them in a box wrapped in a tarp so they won't cause too big of a mess if that happens.

So, does anyone else have experience with this? I know the mold won't kill me or anything, but it certainly can make the beer pretty untasty.

If it turns out, I will definitely post this on Revvy's screwed-up-my-beer-but-still-tastes-ok thread.
 
I had a pretty significant amount of mold on the krausen ring of a recent beer - not sure why. The beer, which I racked out from under the mold carefully, was FANTASTIC. I mean wow - one of my best. Clean, crisp, no off flavors at all. Very, very tasty.

I also had mold (or something else weird) growing all over the top of a SN Celebration Ale clone. It also turned out great.
 
Good steaks are allowed to "age" until moldy, great cheese lives under mold, lot of great stuff involves mold I wouldn't worry.
 
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