White Floaties in an old brew

Hi all,

I've been away from brewing and the forum for months because all this real life stuff happened. I bought a new house and moved into it, but now I'm getting ready to get back in the game! Now, on to the problem.

I have a fruit beer that I brewed about four months ago, my last batch before the hiatus, as a matter of fact. I kept in the primary for a few weeks, then pasteurized some fruit and added them to a secondary, where it stayed for almost three weeks. Then I racked to a tertiary, and had plans to try to do my first keg of beer. Well, all this real life stuff came along, and I kept putting it off and putting it off. I was going to bottle or keg it before we moved, then I said I'd do it the last day when we'd gotten everything out of our apartment, then I decided to do it after we moved.

I had a plan to keg it for our housewarming party, but when I looked at the carboy after two weeks in the new house, I saw white floaties on top! So, I scratched that plan and decided to just ice down a bunch of my cider instead. Now, I've got five gallons of probably sour beer, and I don't know what to do with it. Am I in a position to do some kind of lambic style beer now, or is there any other hope for this beer? I'd really hate to dump it after all this time. Maybe sourness would taste okay with raspberry-flavored beer?

Have you tasted it? Give it a taste, it might not be bad. If it is sour, then I'm sorry to say but you might have to dump, you don't know what kind of bacteria might have infected the beer. It cannot be called a lambic, if you have not brewed a proper lambic with the correct microorganisms, then it's not a lambic, it's an infected beer. It would be better to dump the beer than risk getting sick, plus you can brew an American wheat beer and add the fruit. How did you pasteurize the fruit?

I thought there were no know pathogens that can survive in beer.

Sounds like mold. I would draw a sample from below the surface and taste. If it tastes ok, then rack from under the surface, keg and drink quickly.....

Well, I finally worked up the nerve to taste it. It's sour, but I can't decide it if bad or not. I think the sourness might be okay with the raspberry flavor, tending towards tartness. I guess it couldn't hurt to keg it. I'll just dump it otherwise, and I don't really have anything to lose at this point.

I have brewed plenty of bad beer so I am somewhat of a self proclaimed expert. Here's how I do it. I drink a glass and say to myself, can I drink one after another and drinlk 5 gallons of this crap?
You be the judge.

jdoiv said:

Sounds like mold. I would draw a sample from below the surface and taste. If it tastes ok, then rack from under the surface, keg and drink quickly.....

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Wouldn't this run the risk of infecting your racking equipment, a keg, a beer line, and a tap with mold?

I have not had an infected batch yet. But if I do have one, I'm gonna dump it. I bottle, and I don't want to expose my racking cane, bottling bucket, and 48 bottles to mold or anything else.

Plus, I can guarantee that SWMBO would not drink it. So I'd be left to drink 5 gallons of infected beer all by myself. Doesn't sound appetizing.

Just my two cents.

If you sanitize everything before and after, you should have nothing to fear. If you looked at it that way, I'd have to throw out my carboy as well, since it had an infection inside. But cleaning everything should eliminate that concern.

As for the beer, I decided to bottle it. I racked about four and a half gallons of it to the bottling bucket, maybe less, leaving a good 2-3 inches in the carboy, which included 99% of the visible infection. I added the priming sugar and lactose, as per usual with this recipe, and it tasted pretty good at that point. I also left some of the beer in the bottling bucket, coming out with a measly forty bottles when all was said and done. Still, I think I erred on the side of caution, and forty is better than zero!

This beer ended up tasting delicious and having no problem. I'll be brewing it again soon, but without the four month layover in tertiary.