This looks scary: Any Ideas?

About 7 days ago I transferred my 1st batch of beer from my primary fermentation bucket to a glass carboy.

The top of the batch is starting to look very ugly:
http://www.currentperspectives.org/distribution/beer.jpg

Any ideas?

Ingredients:
Hops:
US Fuggle
UK Pheonix

Malt:
Briess CBW Pure Malt Extract (Golden Light)
Crosby-Baker Weyermann Vienna (WEY6016)

Yeast:
White Labs WLP570 Belgian Golden Ale Yeast
Wyeast Yeast Nutrient

I agree that doesn't look good. Did your fermentation kick back up after your transferred? I'm sorry I can't help you with direct experience on this, but it does look mold-ish.

I think that is what wild yeast looks like.

Nice.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/post-your-infection-71400/

Whatcha got there is a bon-a-fide Infecshun!

Lactobacillus

Yup, infection

Doesn't look like lacto to me, I'd guess Brett (wild yeast).

hopefully you have another carboy kicking around and don't need this batch for anything in particular.

let it ride! check it out in a year.

Is it still drinkable? Tinga: Why wait a year?

jlaroche said:

Is it still drinkable? Tinga: Why wait a year?

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Well that entirely depends on you. There aren't any human pathogens that can live in beer as far as I know, so it isn't going to hurt you. Whether it is palatable or not is another story. But people have had some weird, wacky things happen with infections.

If it is Lacto you will have a soured beer on your hands. Sour beers are normally aged for quite a bit. Taste it if you like bottle and drink. If it tastes funky leave it and try it again in 6 months. It's a good excuse to get a second fermenter anyways.

Others on this forum are as familiar as I am with this, so they may weigh in. It’s a scum mold, very familiar to picklers and makers of other fermented products. Scum mold requires oxygen to grow and a way to suppress it is by having a good CO2 layer in your head space. Doesn’t really hurt pickles or sauerkraut.

our's looks exactly the same. it's an imperial ipa and we were looking to dry hop in two days. is it ok to dry hop with the scum? should we rack to eliminate the scum before attempting a dry hop? any thoughts on aging if it is a wild yeast? is a hoppy wild beer any good?
thanks!!!

HeidiHo said:

our's looks exactly the same. it's an imperial ipa and we were looking to dry hop in two days. is it ok to dry hop with the scum? should we rack to eliminate the scum before attempting a dry hop? any thoughts on aging if it is a wild yeast? is a hoppy wild beer any good?
thanks!!!

Click to expand...

not usually but you never know.

HeidiHo said:

our's looks exactly the same. it's an imperial ipa and we were looking to dry hop in two days. is it ok to dry hop with the scum? should we rack to eliminate the scum before attempting a dry hop? any thoughts on aging if it is a wild yeast? is a hoppy wild beer any good?
thanks!!!

Click to expand...

If you see those patterns, it's gonna get ugly. Infections always show very neat patterns: radial lines, fluffy cumulous balls, etc.

You can't "eliminate" by racking from underneath. The yeast or bacteria is pervasive. But if it still tastes good, go ahead and dry hop and get it cold quickly. Cold will subdue the nefarious critters. G'luck.

Yea, if it still tastes good and you can keg, keg it immediately and drink fast. If it tastes bad now, pitch it, it's not getting any better. If it tastes weird or you're the adventurous type, let it go for a year or two and then bottle/keg. You don't want to bottle it now on the off chance you got something super attenuative in there that could cause bottle bombs.

A soured IIPA will be nasty... Just get it consumed as quickly as possible.

My experience has only been with pickles and the scum mold (AKA kahm yeast)] won’t go away by racking. It will always come back if there is air (O2) over the vessel. Consequently, it should go away after bottling (i.e., bottle conditioning) since the O2 in the bottle will be used up by the beer yeast and replaced with CO2. I don’t see bottle bombs from it. How the beer will taste is another matter.