Another infection question

I've had this Blue Moon clone in secondary for ten days, just checked on it today, and saw tiny white spots on the surface. There's condensation on the sides of the carboy, so I took pics through the top...
But I can't upload them until my membership upgrade is processed.
The spots are opaque, they don't look like bubbles, but it's hard to see through the glass.
Any help??

Here we go...

It looks like your upgrade went through, let's see the pics. Tiny white spots don't necessarily mean infection though

In the first one there's a flashlight shining from the left.
The second shot shows more clearly the spots.

It's really hard to see but it looks like yeast clumpies to me. Do they look like mold spots to you?

I dunno... I'm one of the few who hasn't had an infection before, so I've got no reference.
They look small and white and they weren't there two days ago.

It's probably OK.

1.) Sanitize the airlock again

2.) Put the airlock back on

3.) Wait a week.

If it's mold it will continue to grow, eventually making it to the point where there's no doubt in the world.

If it's not mold, it will sit there for the next week.

After that week, if you're not SURE it's mold give it a sniff. If it smells bad, it might be infected. If it's not, give it a taste. If it tastes bad, it might be infected. If it's not infected, you saved yourself some money by not dumping a good batch.



Good luck.

I was planning to bottle in 3 days, can't I just rack off into the priming bucket, leaving the surface undisturbed(as much as this is possible), and hope for the best?

Joe American said:

I was planning to bottle in 3 days, can't I just rack off into the priming bucket, leaving the surface undisturbed(as much as this is possible), and hope for the best?

Click to expand...

Sure you can. That will work. If it's good, you've got beer to drink. If it's bad, well, you're only out the time you took to bottle it.

Yeah, that's what I thought too... but I really wanted this batch to work out.

I'd drink it.

Taste it. That is prolly your best indicator at this time. I agree that it looks like it could very well be yeastie beasties.

I noticed the same problem with one of five fermentors and am considering what I should do about it. The iside of the carboy (secondary) has heavy condensation, floating white culture looking things (the floaties in mine are the same color, fewer but larger, circular, and some have joined to form figure 8 looking arrangements), cloudy at 10 days, still bubbles from the air lock (possibly from bacterial activity).

I considered that it might be yeast floaties but mine is a steam beer (from a kit) that came with a lager yeast. Don't dog me, I usually don't use kits but this was my first batch in 10 years and my other stuff hadn't arrived yet and I couldn't wait.

My other four batches are proceding nicely; no condensation, crystal clear, and behaving as expected.

I have taken to the new step of purging the oxygen from the secondary by means of a hand-held CO2 dispenser, but didn't have the thing for that first batch that seems to have gone south.

My guess is that my problem could be O2 contamination - contributing to surface growths, or I didn't properly sanitize the stopcock on the better bottle primary before transferring to the secondary fermenter.

Any comments in addition to those already posted for this phenomena are appreciated?

Well, I decided to bottle this little experiment today, and when I lifted the carboy out of the freezer, the disturbance caused almost all of the white dots to sink to the bottom.
I see this as a good sign, 'cause if this was a mold it'd be fuzzy, and the fuzz would prevent the dots from sinking, due to surface tension.
Right?

So now I'm going for a walk to my local pub to sell some "viet cong hunting club" t-shirts, have a couple brews, and let the beer settle before I rack it.
Any further insight is definitely welcome...