Gah, my first infection

...yes, it is a real infection.... nasty white moldy penicillin looking stuff sitting on top on my beer

I skimmed as much of the stuff off the top as I could tonight and will rack it into a secondary tomorrow in hopes that I can salvage it somewhat. If the scum does not come back after I let it sit in the other bucket for a couple of weeks, I'll try bottling it....if I start to see the mold come back, I think I'll rack it again and then drink as much flat warm beer as I can in one night (if it is at all palatable) and toss the rest down the drain.

Oh well, here's to homebrewing!

that sucks. any idea what caused it?

RIP beer

Whippy said:

...yes, it is a real infection.... nasty white moldy penicillin looking stuff sitting on top on my beer

I skimmed as much of the stuff off the top as I could tonight and will rack it into a secondary tomorrow in hopes that I can salvage it somewhat. If the scum does not come back after I let it sit in the other bucket for a couple of weeks, I'll try bottling it....if I start to see the mold come back, I think I'll rack it again and then drink as much flat warm beer as I can in one night (if it is at all palatable) and toss the rest down the drain.

Oh well, here's to homebrewing!

Click to expand...

LOL:cross:

I have no idea, especially because I just started my 1st brew yesterday, but cant you "pasteurize" beer and kill the foreign culture?

Either way, you'll likely have off flavors

AdamPag said:

I have no idea, especially because I just started my 1st brew yesterday, but cant you "pasteurize" beer and kill the foreign culture?

Either way, you'll likely have off flavors

Click to expand...

Sounds nasty. I am going to guess that the bottles would explode if capped, and if left opened up, I think distilling may be near that temp, not sure though.

Yeah, that worry of exploding bottles has crossed my mind, badbrew. It may not be worth trying to save. I AM going to try everything I can to salvage SOMETHING of it, though.

I am not sure what caused it, jester, but I did take a gravity reading last week while I was pretty drunk, so I might have drooled in it or something

I know this might sound nasty, but I was thinking of spraying the top with distilled vinegar to see if that would kill the mold. Plain white vinegar is how I killed the fungus that was eating my toenails and turning them yellow. Now they are a nice healthy pink.

I may as well experiment with this problem while I have it. If I can come up with a way to defeat the infection, maybe I can get a Nobel Prize or something...or at least a bunch of ale!

Whippy said:

...yes, it is a real infection.... nasty white moldy penicillin looking stuff sitting on top on my beer

I skimmed as much of the stuff off the top as I could tonight and will rack it into a secondary tomorrow in hopes that I can salvage it somewhat. If the scum does not come back after I let it sit in the other bucket for a couple of weeks, I'll try bottling it....if I start to see the mold come back, I think I'll rack it again and then drink as much flat warm beer as I can in one night (if it is at all palatable) and toss the rest down the drain.

Oh well, here's to homebrewing!

Click to expand...

Put it in a carboy and age it for half a year or so! Maybe it will turn out to be a great sour beer!

Whippy said:

...yes, it is a real infection.... nasty white moldy penicillin looking stuff sitting on top on my beer

I skimmed as much of the stuff off the top as I could tonight and will rack it into a secondary tomorrow in hopes that I can salvage it somewhat. If the scum does not come back after I let it sit in the other bucket for a couple of weeks, I'll try bottling it....if I start to see the mold come back, I think I'll rack it again and then drink as much flat warm beer as I can in one night (if it is at all palatable) and toss the rest down the drain.

Oh well, here's to homebrewing!

Click to expand...

A lot of people recommend just racking from under the top layer. Taste the beer that is under it. If it tastes fine, then prime/bottle and get to drinking before it takes back over in the bottles or causes off flavors. Don't resort to dumping it just because there is an infection. I know it's easier said than done because of the "Show your infection here" thread that is out there with all the disgusting looking pics. I questioned drinking it myself and people have calmed my nerves on infections. Moral of the story, try it, if it tastes fine, forget racking into another secondary to let sit. Bottle it up (if it's at it's FG of course) and drink it carbonated!

That sounds like a sound idea, brewnoob. I guess the quicker I get to it, the better the chance will be of avoiding off flavors.

Thankfully, there were only spots of the white mold here and there, along with a film of scum on the top. It is not as if the entire surface was covered. I may have caught it before the bad flavors have taken over.

I think I'll take your advice and bottle it up ASAP and then open one at a time on a regular basis to check for overcarbing. If they start to get out of control, I'll cold crash them and start drinking.

thanks

Should be good to go then!

Well, it is bottled now for better or worse!

I drank a couple of beers worth of the dregs and it still tasted good, so I am optimistic. It had only been in the fermenter for two weeks, so it was not exactly where I wanted to be as far as clarity and conditioning, but I couldn't really be choosy, could I?

The worst thing about this whole ordeal is that this was a 5 gallon experimental batch. I brewed this one with 96% Vienna and low hops and another identical except using Munich instead. I wanted to learn to differentiate the tastes of the grains better. I hope my conclusions will not be something like, "Vienna tastes like pond water with a dead deer in it and Munich tastes nice!" lol The uniqueness of the Vienna malt DOES shine through nice so far, so perhaps I will still be able to learn something from it. I just wonder if the infection will stay out of the bottled beers enough to allow a side by side...time will tell, though it may not be likely, as I only brewed the Munich malt beer a week ago.

I'll post here after a while to tell if the early bottling worked.

Did you cook the grains long enough and high enough? I wonder if the infection came from that.

You should still get a good determination of the differences I would think. If you drink both early around the same time, that should give a basic idea anyways. Maybe I'm way off, but I wouldn't think that if the beer tasted fine going into the bottles, if you drink earlier rather than later, you should be fine with the experiment.