Possible infection?

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NOISEpollution

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So I have an imperial brown ale that spent a week and a half in primary and has now been in secondary for close to a month. It spent two weeks on oak chips. A few days ago I pulled out the carboy to show a friend and put it back. Today I pulled it out again to begin bottling only to find that there were a few white bubbles floating on top of the beer. Also, there were shards of oak chip scraps floating that were not floating when I looked at it the other day. Is this infected? It tastes fine and smells fine but I don't want to drink anything that will make me sick. I was particularly careful with my sanitation for this batch so I'm wondering how this could happen. Any thoughts?
 
I don't think it is infected. In all likelihood, when who pulled the carboy out, you roused some yeast and oak chips off the bottom. You might even have eked out a little more fementation in the process. if it looks fine and smells fine, it is fine. You won't get sick from it, unless you drink 12 pints in one hour.:drunk:
 
I wouldn't worry much about it. Moving the secondary could have stirred up some things that floated up in to solution and maybe even released some of the small amount of CO2 in solution which could raise up some small bits of oak. If you're not detecting anything wrong with the aroma or the flavor then it is very unlikely there will be a problem. Even if you have unfortunate bad luck and have some sort of infection it won't make you sick... Might tatse horrid and be undrinkable, but it won't make you sick(well unless you just drink way too much).
 
Small white bubbles or big shiny plasticy bubbles? If it's the former, possibly a change in pressure/temperature is causing some CO2 to come out of solution. Some of the CO2 bubbles could be clinging to the wood chunks and lifting them up to the surface.
 
Sound like you may have got things excited in there when you moved it around. Should be fine, but send me a sample to make sure. Prime and bottle it, in 3weeks tell us how good it is. Cheers:)
 
It's pretty hard to get an infection... more than likely your beer is a-o.k. I wouldn't worry about getting sick unless it makes you sick to smell and drink it.
 
Sound like you may have got things excited in there when you moved it around. Should be fine, but send me a sample to make sure. Prime and bottle it, in 3weeks tell us how good it is. Cheers:)

+1. To be completely accurate, I'll need to conduct a full analysis of the beer. Please send me 6 bottles. :mug:
 
Well, I bottled it and forgot to take a picture but after looking through the infection thread I'm starting to think its brett. The bubbles are white just like the ones in most of the pictures I saw. The only thing confusing me is that in the pictures, the entire carboy is engulfed in the bubbles while I only had one or two bubbles about the size of a nickel. Also, it was on oak chips for a couple of weeks and I read that brett can come from oak. I didn't really notice any huge difference in smell or taste though.
 
hercher said:
+1. To be completely accurate, I'll need to conduct a full analysis of the beer. Please send me 6 bottles. :mug:

Just to make sure the test is thorough, you should send another 6 here. If you did this with 4 others, you would probably have some fairly accurate results.
 
Well, I bottled it and forgot to take a picture but after looking through the infection thread I'm starting to think its brett. The bubbles are white just like the ones in most of the pictures I saw. The only thing confusing me is that in the pictures, the entire carboy is engulfed in the bubbles while I only had one or two bubbles about the size of a nickel. Also, it was on oak chips for a couple of weeks and I read that brett can come from oak. I didn't really notice any huge difference in smell or taste though.

Seriously now, if it is Brett you will know in a few weeks when you drink it. Brett infection on your equipment will have to be removed by cleaning with bleach water solution, and a quat sanatizer (Quaternary amonia) solution .You can get quat at Sams or Wally world for a few bucks. I would be happy to sample a Lambic for you.:)Cheers:D
 
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