Pellicle Photo Collection

Flanders brewed in March of this year using Jamil Z’s recipe for Rodenbach. Primary with a 50/50 mix of Belgian Sour Mix and Flemish Ale, then pitched Jolly Pumpkin dregs in secondary.

Same beer but after tossing in the oak spiral. Side lighting from a white LED flashlight for the pic.

Been a while since I've posted one. This one isn't even in a fermenter. I have a waste bucket beside my keezer that I use to run beer off into if I'm cooling lines for bottling, or any other waste. Sometimes I forget to dump it. I bottled some of my mixed fermentation with pedio last week and forgot to dump the bucket. Came back and saw this. Just had to get a picture before I tossed it.

48 hrs into a kettle sour

Fresh raspberries and boysenberry puree. Racked from a 6 gallon oak solera.

Sour brown ale with my mish mash culture. I love brewing sour beer!

ong said:

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4-day-old pitch from a mixed fermentation golden sour into sterile wort. This starter is nuts.

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Jesus. I wouldn’t keep this thing in my house.

Flanders Red racked onto prior year’s Flanders red roeselare dregs

Black IPA on secondary fermentation with Brettanomyces lambicus and Brettanomyces buxellensis, about 3 mo in at 82 degrees

wild harvest from outside my window. red ale.

Left is Gigayeast Sour Cherry Funk. Right is Wyeast Lambic blend. Both are on their first generation, started back in late January or early February 2018.

Brett Saison

Half a gallon of our homebrew guild Solera which I added a lb of nectarines to give a local brewery as a thank you for a brewery tour on brewday!

jessup said:

thanks for listing the type of yeast and the age of the brew. that IMO is the most important part of this thread and a major reason i wanted to make this thread!! i think it's safe to say no two pellicles will ever be the same.

thanks to all for participation!!! keep 'em coming...

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What temp was it fermenting at?

I’m excited to share my pellicle. I made a nut brown and pitched it with 100% Brett Brux. that I had started off another beer. I then put it in secondary for ten months and this is what I saw when I went to keg the beer! Smells wonderful, taste so nuanced!

3 months since adding OYL-210 "Where Da Funk."

Roeselare in my Flanders Red at 6 months in primary

RPh_Guy said:

Roeselare in my Flanders Red at 6 months in primary

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brrraaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnsssssss...

Here's my alien growth. After harvesting most of the coffee beans from my tree it only just occurred to me that the berries which I've been composting are probably covered in yeast I could use in my brews. So I boiled up some wort and stuck coffee cherries in it and three days later this is what I've got. Plenty of bubbling happening under the surface. It smells slightly sour and very fruity at the moment but clean, not funky. This morning I removed the pellicle and the berries and added fresh wort and try and see what I've got in a few days. Hopefully I can do a test brew with this stuff by the end of next week and taste it.





I got the idea after making some rosewater from spent blooms in my garden. I bottled it and within a week it had created a mother that had sunk to the bottom. All I did was pour boiling water on top of rose petals. Thought I must have some pretty hardy bug around.

not an actual pellicle, but thought you weirdos might find this interesting... this is what happens when you don't clean out your mash-tun and then leave it outside in the pacific northwest for the month of december:



as soon as you got an inch or two down everything looked normal, only the surface went fuzzy.

Thanks to everyone for sharing the photos. Wow! If I had seen any of these on my fermenter I'd have thought "Oh, no!!!". Now, thanks to everyone, I know better.

Some of these pics make me wanna try brewing a sour. It just looks creepy and cool at the same time lol

Okay what happened here was a 6 gallon dunkels weissbier I brewed for Oktoberfest but when it was ready to keg I only had a 3 gal keg empty, so this is the remainder whic I didn’t have time to package for a while. The aroma when I opened the fermenter today was a lovely banana smell. I pulled a small sample to taste and it smelled strongly of acetone ( nail polish remover) tastes a little sour and not like vinegar. So it is fairly palatable but the smell, is not. I could rack it onto bing cherry concentrate, but I don’t want to waste my time and resources if this has no chance at becoming drinkable. Any thoughts are welcomed.

Hoppy2bmerry said:

smelled strongly of acetone ( nail polish remover)

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Probably ethyl acetate ... That's not going away. I'd dump it.

RPh_Guy said:

Probably ethyl acetate ... That's not going away. I'd dump it.

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Thanks, after the tiny sample sat open for awhile it was not very noticeable. I appreciate your input.

El Nino said:

Some of these pics make me wanna try brewing a sour. It just looks creepy and cool at the same time lol

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congrats, you've been infected

Here my aliens with approx 3 months!!!! A little filter to make it even more artistic....

7 month old farmhouse ale grist with just Imperial sour batch kidz

Here is my contribution to science - pitched with WLP005, no Brett, not intended to sour or wild ferment. It may be drinkable, but could NEVER be duplicated...

House culture of lacto, pedio, and brett in a Belgian saison. This is at two months since pitch.

Weird pellicle on a 6-month-old dark sour with Wyeast Pedio and Brett Lambicus. Does this look alright?

theoryno7 said:

Does this look alright?

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Alright? It looks like a Monet painting. Not like a pellicle I’ve seen before, but that doesn’t mean much. Have you tasted it? Know what mold tastes like? Hopefully not like that.

The Moon

Amadeo38 said:

Alright? It looks like a Monet painting. Not like a pellicle I’ve seen

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Neat! is that a jellyfish on top?

An imperial "Oud Bruin" at 5 months pitched with Sour Batch Kidz.

OG: 1.080
FG: ??

Got fresh strawberries at a local farm last week and decided to toss one in some hopped wort. Got a pellicle going after 7 days. Smells tart and funky... Hopefully there's no acetobacter colony in there.

On a side note, I've got a microscope coming. If I do a few streaks, maybe I can at least see the various bacteria/fungi, even though I won't be able to identify.

Ignore the flecks on the sides of the jar. Those are hop particles that got stranded during shaking sessions.

I don’t have a picture yet, but I was checking my various dregs-in-wort samples and sour brews, and I have what looks like a mushroom growing on the dregs of an Italian sour I brought home in January.

This thread is pretty long, so searching is going to be tough-has anyone had a mushroom-like fungus grow on their sour before? It smells fantastic and it tasted great when we drank it a few months ago, so I am hoping this isn’t something deadly I am growing now.

Pellicle in harvested dregs from a Tilquin lambic.

JAReeves said:

I don’t have a picture yet, but I was checking my various dregs-in-wort samples and sour brews, and I have what looks like a mushroom growing on the dregs of an Italian sour I brought home in January.

This thread is pretty long, so searching is going to be tough-has anyone had a mushroom-like fungus grow on their sour before? It smells fantastic and it tasted great when we drank it a few months ago, so I am hoping this isn’t something deadly I am growing now.

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"[...] the jar in the middle has a reddish/orangeish hue. A good sign that this jar should not be tasted. Good thing, because it eventually grew a friggin MUSHROOM. That is all."
From https://bootlegbiology.com/diy/capturing-yeast/

Is it safe to keep those dregs? Uh, I have no idea. I guess I would remove the mushroom, rouse the yeast sediment, pour out 90% and add the remaining 10% into a new jar with fresh starter wort. If that doesn't grow any mushrooms I think it's probably ok.

I've had a couple Italian sours; I've been impressed so far.
Good luck!

RPh_Guy said:

"If you look at the picture above, the jar in the middle has a reddish/orangeish hue. A good sign that this jar should not be tasted. Good thing, because it eventually grew a friggin MUSHROOM. That is all."
From https://bootlegbiology.com/diy/capturing-yeast/

Is it safe to keep those dregs? Uh, I have no idea. I guess I would remove the mushroom, rouse the yeast sediment, pour out 90% and add the remaining 10% into a new jar with fresh starter wort. If that doesn't grow any mushrooms I think it's probably ok.

I've had a couple Italian sours; I've been impressed so far.
Good luck!

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Thank you! It smells amazing and looks golden from what I can see in the bottle, but I will transfer it out this weekend and see what comes out.