Pink growth

Found this a couple of brews back when I was getting ready to aerate. Fortunately I had a clean spare.

is that a bucket lid? and are you by any chance a giant?

weird

It's a HEPA air line filter, bit I am big for my size.

There is a pink bacterium, I can't remember the latin name, that is commonly used to educate students about sanitation. That species of pink bacteria is harmless, and your sample looks the same.

This may sound gross, but if I don't clean my bathtub twice a month a ton of that pink stuff builds up. Don't know why, I have lived in this area for most of my life and never seen it anywhere but in this house.

Greenbasterd said:

is that a bucket lid? and are you by any chance a giant?

Click to expand...

LOL! It's a filter for his aeration rig. Apparently it successfully trapped some Serratia marcesens...

Cheers!

yeah its just some **** growing on there... I get a reddish bacteria growing inside my white bathroom cups unless I turn them upside down after drinking out of them.

theredben said:

There is a pink bacterium, I can't remember the latin name, that is commonly used to educate students about sanitation. That species of pink bacteria is harmless, and your sample looks the same.

Click to expand...

Usually that would be fusarium, a fungus.

Which brings up something from the "things you never knew you didn't know, and will wish you didn't know now that you do" file.

Malted grains pretty much always carry fusarium on their surface. The malting process makes it unavoidable, and the drying process doesn't kill it.

I've heard that some brewing books recommend against cracking your grain the same day in the same room as you are going to brew, because that will throw a lot of fusarium spores into the air which will then land on every surface in the room.

fusarium survives mashing but not boiling.

If this were an actual problem, though, your beer would be pink.

TimpanogosSlim - I was actually referring to the Serratia marcesens mentioned above. While Fusarium sp. can often looks pink in culture (i.e. petri dish), they will not appear pink when growing in the environment.

Just so future readers do not become confused, the reason you do not crush your grain in the same room as you brew the beer is due to Lactobacillus, a bacteria, which can grow in beer quite well, while Fusarium does not grow in beer.

I stand corrected. Thanks for the clarification.