Floating White Spots

What are these? Is it any infection? I brewed up this batch of ale (from a prepackaged kit) about 3 months ago. Six weeks ago I added a vanilla bean. It looked fine at the time. I opened it up to bottle today and saw these weird white spots of thin, solid forms floating on the top. I can put my finger on them and they stick - like little curls of peeled latex paint. They do not smell or have a taste to them. The size range is from the diameter of a quarter to twice that. They are as white as the driven snow - no cream tinge or anything.

Since there are only on the top, I want to rack into bottling bucket, leave it behind and that is that but I'm afraid if it is an infection that could be dangerous (or just ruin the beer). Anyone had this before?

Witchy

Yeast floaties.

It's probably yeast unless it's fuzzy or stringy. Put the lid back on and keep your fingers out of your beer!

Thanks for helping. I am a semi-experienced mead-maker (6 batches) but this is only my second foray into homebrewing so I didn't know what to think. One more thing - I thought beer was ready to bottle after a month or two. Is it normal to still have yeast floaties after 3 months? When will it be ready to bottle?

Witchy

It was probably ready to bottle 7 weeks ago. You can bottle beer as soon as the specific gravity stops dropping (indicating a complete fermentation). Here's a quick description of the 1-2-3 rule that works for almost all ales:

Ales usually only take about 1 week to finish most of their fermentation. Many homebrewers rack it off of the yeast/trub cake at that point and let it begin conditioning/clearing. After another 2 weeks, it's usually ready to bottle. Let it condition in the bottle for another 3 weeks, and it's ready to drink!

I've actually begun drinking beer as early as 2 weeks after brewing using kegs and force carbonation.

Those white spots may or may not be something to get concerned about, but I'd recommend bottling now. Avoid getting the white stuff into your bottles. Taste some of the beer before you get too deep into the bottling process - if it's sour, it's probably infected. At that point, it's up to you and your palette whether to discard it or not.

WitchyWoman said:

What are these? Is it any infection? I brewed up this batch of ale (from a prepackaged kit) about 3 months ago. Six weeks ago I added a vanilla bean. It looked fine at the time. I opened it up to bottle today and saw these weird white spots of thin, solid forms floating on the top. I can put my finger on them and they stick - like little curls of peeled latex paint. They do not smell or have a taste to them. The size range is from the diameter of a quarter to twice that. They are as white as the driven snow - no cream tinge or anything.

Since there are only on the top, I want to rack into bottling bucket, leave it behind and that is that but I'm afraid if it is an infection that could be dangerous (or just ruin the beer). Anyone had this before?

Witchy

Click to expand...

the only time i've ever seen this it's been an infection...but somehow a harmless one, just leave it all behind whenyou rack or bottle
why worry when you can just wait ..... and have another

My guess, without a microscopic look at the white spots, is that you have a mold infestion on the surface of your beer. It may or may not affect the flavor. At 3 months, you have sufficient time to grow some nice molds. Was this beer aged under CO2 for the 3 months?

Dr Malt

I thought I knew the answer to Witchys problem but after re-reading her post I don't. But I have another Question.

I want to make a really red beer, not amber or coffee, but pretty red.

What gives red beers their color and can one make them redder without making them darn near black?

Ok digging up an old thread but this happened to me too... I have a strong porter that's around 7% and was doing fine in primary, then after 3 weeks in primary I racked it to secondary along with two cut and scraped vanilla beans. A week later there are white floaties on top of the beer... Has me somewhat concerned, but they haven't gotten any worse over the past few weeks. Any chance this is just some kind of bleaching of vanilla seeds or something?

I'm getting ready to keg it and hope for the best. It always makes me nervous since I'm allergic to a lot of molds. Seems unlikely that after it was done fermenting it would get infected since at that point it's high in alcohol and low in sugar, which isn't a very good environment for infections...

Glad I found this thread.

Bottled my vanilla porter tonight which I threw 3 vanilla beans into (cut in half) 2 weeks ago. I had the exact same white floaties as the picture above.

Seems this is something that happens with vanilla beans.

Hope this helps the next guy who stumbles across this thread.

mikealangevin said:

I thought I knew the answer to Witchys problem but after re-reading her post I don't. But I have another Question.

I want to make a really red beer, not amber or coffee, but pretty red.

What gives red beers their color and can one make them redder without making them darn near black?

Click to expand...

Roasted barley should give a red color

Ok, appears I'm a few years late to the party here. The wife noticed these in my choc. oatmeal porter. Very small in length, like an 1/8". Tastes good, two split vanilla beans added to secondary. Hmmmm...

-BB

BeerdedBrewer said:

Ok, appears I'm a few years late to the party here. The wife noticed these in my choc. oatmeal porter. Very small in length, like an 1/8". Tastes good, two split vanilla beans added to secondary. Hmmmm...

-BB

Click to expand...

Is it oils form the vanilla beans that has clumped together?

My guess would be that oils would also be a place for other things to take refuge.

I'm just spitballing. I don't know what's up.

Holy thread resurrection, Batman!

Haha, hey Devin, I hear ya. I scoured the forum and internet and never got a definitive answer, I assume because there isn't one without a microscopic analysis. Anyway, just joined a brew club, I'm going to take some of this to first meeting, and see if anyone knows. It tastes good (actually had a professional brewer taste it, but forgot to ask him about this, not sure it was in the bottle we drank, and he did not detect any off flavors).

Just perplexing....

BB:beard: