Pellicle Photo Collection

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Has anyone seen something like this before? I think it's a combo of trub/yeast, but the slimy cottage cheese like texture makes me think it could be something worse.

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WOW! just found this thread. I got that white skin on top on a brew, i tried to bottle it and the same white"web" started growing in the bottles aswell after just a few days, that freaked me out so i tried to open one and it gushed evereywhere so i had to pour em all out. Doens this happen to you?

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WOW! just found this thread. I got that white skin on top on a brew, i tried to bottle it and the same white"web" started growing in the bottles aswell after just a few days, that freaked me out so i tried to open one and it gushed evereywhere so i had to pour em all out. Doens this happen to you?
your bottles gushed because there were still sugars in there that the bugs - whatever was creating that "white skin", or pellicle - could still ferment. your brewers yeast, saccharomyces, couldn't digest them but other microbes like brettanomyces, lactobacilus and pediococcus can. they continued to ferment in the bottle and build up pressure. good thing you opened them when you did. had you waited longer, they might have exploded as pressure continued to build.

how to avoid this? make sure that those residual sugars are completely fermented before bottling. this is one of the reasons why sour beers can take months to make.
 
your bottles gushed because there were still sugars in there that the bugs - whatever was creating that "white skin", or pellicle - could still ferment. your brewers yeast, saccharomyces, couldn't digest them but other microbes like brettanomyces, lactobacilus and pediococcus can. they continued to ferment in the bottle and build up pressure. good thing you opened them when you did. had you waited longer, they might have exploded as pressure continued to build.

how to avoid this? make sure that those residual sugars are completely fermented before bottling. this is one of the reasons why sour beers can take months to make.

Yeah I realized that i was quite lucky, it was just when i was supposed to move the bottles to the basement i saw that something was goin on. Would have been hell to clean the basement if the 30+ bottles started exploding down there...
 
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Dregs from my '13 flanders red overspill, which I'd kept to pitch Ito this years version. Brewed this weekend, and in it went


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Has anyone seen something like this before? I think it's a combo of trub/yeast, but the slimy cottage cheese like texture makes me think it could be something worse.


I've had one of these in the fridge since last year, mine looked the same as this. Originally intended to re pitch it this year but am now kinda worried in case it's gonna smell like rotting roadkill when I open it.

You folk think it'd be okay to re-use after so long?


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This is my first funky/wild brew. 60/40/10 pils/wheat/Munich with Perle hops to about 20ibu and a starter of wlp670. Brew day was July 2. It's very fruity and a little funky. It's kind of boring, so I'm about to rack half onto wild blackberries picked this summer and half onto some more Perle.

I had another bucket from the same brew that got ecy03 and Hill Farmstead/Crooked Stave dregs. Pellicle was just a grimy skin, but it tastes incredible. Fruity, earthy, green apple, tart. Shaping up to be the best beer I've made.
I want to take a nap on that.
 
This is interesting, my Berliner Weisse that's been in the fermenter 3 weeks...just in the last few days this started to appear on the top. Up until this formed, it looked like any other (non sour) beer I'd brewed.
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I used WLP677 (Lacto Delbruekii) in a 1/2 quart starter, left at 100F for 6 days. On day 4 I threw a handful of crushed pilsner into the starter too.

I wasn't expecting a pellicle given my use of only Lacto, but I guess the grain probably had a bunch of other bacteria on it too that might be causing this? I tasted it a few days ago, before the pellicle started forming, and had virtually no sour about it at all. I will taste it again now, would the formation of a pellicle normally indicate souring?

I was/am hoping to keg this soon for an event this Sunday, I'm sure it'd like to be left longer from the looks of it though...
 
This is interesting, my Berliner Weisse that's been in the fermenter 3 weeks...just in the last few days this started to appear on the top. Up until this formed, it looked like any other (non sour) beer I'd brewed.
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I used WLP677 (Lacto Delbruekii) in a 1/2 quart starter, left at 100F for 6 days. On day 4 I threw a handful of crushed pilsner into the starter too.

I wasn't expecting a pellicle given my use of only Lacto, but I guess the grain probably had a bunch of other bacteria on it too that might be causing this?
Yes, probably. Lacto on its own can produce a pellicle, but that looks like more than just Lacto.
I tasted it a few days ago, before the pellicle started forming, and had virtually no sour about it at all. I will taste it again now, would the formation of a pellicle normally indicate souring?


Not necessarily. It just means that there is oxygen present.
 
When I sour mash, I keep it at about 100F and it's plenty sour in 2 days, 3 is too much. I've been using a handful of grain though, not commercial cultures, and no starter.
 
Yeast caught from a spontaneous fermentation in my garage. At the time I had hay and wood in the garage....

Fairly certain that's a pellicle forming and the rest is just coagulated proteins? Happy to be corrected....

Recipe was a basic SMaSH of Vienna & EKG to test out the yeast. Has taken the beer from 1.052 to 1.000 as of today's hydro test.

Same beer after being racked onto feijoas for 5 days:

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Someone suggested I repost this here. One year ago, I brewed some lambic (with turbid mash) and aged it in a 59 gal wine barrel. Took out the beer (except for maybe 10 gal) a week ago to age on top of fruit. BTW, the year-old lambic is delicious! Anyways, brewed up some more to top off the barrel (it was left at 10 gal for a few hours and took two days to fill back up again -- 35 gal that day and 13 gal the next day). I did not aerate other than letting it crash into the barrel. I noticed no airlock activity for about a week and decided to check on it today. Here are the pics. Any ideas on what kind of pellicle this is? I plan to get some additional yeast (particularly with some saccharomyces) to get strong fermentation started. The original yeast was Wyeast WLP655 (Belgian sour mix).

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Someone suggested I repost this here. One year ago, I brewed some lambic (with turbid mash) and aged it in a 59 gal wine barrel. Took out the beer (except for maybe 10 gal) a week ago to age on top of fruit. BTW, the year-old lambic is delicious! Anyways, brewed up some more to top off the barrel (it was left at 10 gal for a few hours and took two days to fill back up again -- 35 gal that day and 13 gal the next day). I did not aerate other than letting it crash into the barrel. I noticed no airlock activity for about a week and decided to check on it today. Here are the pics. Any ideas on what kind of pellicle this is? I plan to get some additional yeast (particularly with some saccharomyces) to get strong fermentation started. The original yeast was Wyeast WLP655 (Belgian sour mix).

And a few days later, I got some saccharomyces in (via some Belgian sour mix) and pitched it. This is what the pellicle looks like now.

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this is a dark strong ale, i added the last part of two bottle of orval in order to add some brett. 5 weeks ago

this could be a start of brett pellicle? i added brett in other beer and the pellicle was way different!

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