Help!!!!!!!

:rockin:So, I have been brewing about a year and am on my 40-somethingth batch and it happened - contamination!!... I haven't tried it yet, but I have an American pale/amber basic brew that had developed an 1/8 thick film atop the beer in the secondary during the 3rd week aging. I know it is not Kraussen or yeast, it's something of which I have only seen in the dreaded contamination posts. Within the film there are 1-3" bubbles that have formed perhaps five or six. I can try to get photos in the next day or so if someone happens to care to see it themselves. Anywho, I understand it could be good but I am in an awkwardly and potentially good brewing situation right now. I have about 500 bottle and two kegs ready to drink and 7 free carboys and a newly formed club to mutually brew with.

So to the point, I have the time and space and capacity to toss a loss (although certainly not preferred). My crazy thinking was to actually syphon the brew off of the yeast cake and the bulk of the colony into the kettle and boil again. At this point, pitch a pound of molassass, hop the crap out of it, maybe some adjunct berries steeped in wild turkey and some oak...... maybe some additional malts just to steep in and make some imperial insanity mix up brew.... Kinda like, making lemonade out of life's lemons...

Has anyone tried it or thought it through more than myself? (as in more than the time it took me to write this post)



****** I've seen a couple posts here about people thinking they could boil beer to concentrate alcohol so before that notion takes over the thread lemme say I will be pitching a new yeast in the above scenario lol

you might also try to siphon off the beer under it, then stop with about 3 inches left. not sure if that would work. i'd keg, just in case it doesn't

Dump it, nuke all equipment with bleach, and brew again. Seriously. It's a fail.

passedpawn said:

Dump it, nuke all equipment with bleach, and brew again. Seriously. It's a fail.

Click to expand...

Well I will commit nuclear warfare on my equipment before moving forward with any other brews FOR SURE. And based on what I've read in most books and posts here it still deserves a taste.

My take is that I have the capacity to isolate this somewhere far from my other brewing equipment to possibly experiment. In fact I've got 3gallon carboy I generally do cysers in that I could use and put it in the spare bedroom.


I guess my question is more geared towards: Has anyone ever returned a fermented batch to wort as a start over, not necessarilly due to contamination?

Wow!

I can't believe I'm about to say this but I disagree with Pasedpawn. If you have the equipment available to bottle and set aside then why not try?

Passedpawn's advice is always spot on though so I'm probably missing something.

Maybe it's the rebel in me that says "Go for it!"

Thanks Dan & PassedPawn, if I had the 3-4 going like normal I would totally roll into my brew room HazMat style and not even make an attempt to salvage. I just simply don't have anything else to worry about contaminating and (I guess I didn't explain about the group in my post) our homebrewers club has actually moved to doing batches between the 4 of us on the pilot system at our local brewery so it would just be this brew in the house.

FYI, I have brett-ed this brew and tossed the dregs from a couple sours as well as racked over some cherries. It actually smelled pretty great still evern though it was ugly as hell. We decided to embrace it and ride it out. Probablly bottle in a month or 2 to let the bacteria run its course. Hopefully we get some pleasant funk.