Infected beer...

Hi,
We brewed a chocolate stout that has lactose in it and everything was going great guns until we put it in the carboy for the second fermentation and added a vanilla bean. I gave that bean a good spray with star san and shook it off really well and threw it in the carboy--should of soaked it in vodka...dumb, dumb, dumb. We were gone for the weekend and came home to 2 to 3 inch circles of white-ish stuff covering the surface. I couldn't find a photo of infection that looked like this nasty stuff, but I am assuming the batch is infected. What the heck does lactose baccillus look like anyway and could that be the problem. We are going to try to get the beer out of the carboy without disturbing the ugly crud too much and salvage what we can because it was starting out to be really, really good. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!!!

Can you post a picture on here? You should be able to search for lactobaccillus on this site and come up with something to confirm.

Does it smell different or taste bad?

From what I can see from other pics, it is lactobaccillus. I tried to take a picture, but my camera chose only to focus on the glass and not the stuff inside. Since this isn't something that will kill us if we taste it, that's what we'll do. Smells OK at this time, but I can't imagine a sour "sweet chocolate stout" will be yummy. Bummer, cause it was expensive to make and I had been anticipating trying this recipe for quite a while. Well, upward and onward, as they say...to better brews!

Update...my husband just finished the beer and absolutely loved it. we finally figured out that the alcohol was super low and that is why the vanilla bean infected it. Not sure what went wrong there. Anyway, I guess it's true that there is no bad beer.