Please help identify..

Hey all,

About to rack to secondary (sorry, clearing tank..) when I saw THIS..







it looks like a little skin has formed.. I was going to rack from underneath but i wasnt sure if i should bother..

What IS this?? Never seen anything like it.'

It looks like a pellicle, which is indeed a sign of infection (sometimes intentional, but probably not in your case). Still I'd definately rack from under it, but you might want to go straight to bottles and skip the secondary.

I was afraid of that..

Problem was, THIS all happened. Long story short, i got a really old batch of beer and it would simply NOT ferment properly.. i cannot get it lower than 1.019 or so, and I do not want to bottle it because of bottle bombs. At this point I am afraid that its a waste

We get a million "is my beer infected" questions every week and 99% of them are false alarms. You my friend are likely in a very small group. That has all the signs of a bacterial pellicle. What you do now depends on the type of beer you started with, the type of bacteria causing it, and your patience and adventurousness.
First off, how does it smell?
If you don't have a palate for funky or sour beers, and don't like the taste of this one, you might want to just move on. there are several beer styles that benefit from the situation you appear to be in, but they are rare, take patience, and simply not to everyones taste.
At the very least, bottle some and put it away for a long time.
Try them in a year, who knows?
Of course this is all based on a couple of photos and a description, and I might be plain wrong.

Type of beer: Robust Porter, Brewer's Best, about 1 year old.
Patience: little, when it comes to beer (probably from still being a newb I assume..)
Adventurousness: Normally pretty high, but if keeping it around is tying up the little equipment I have......

It smells like beer quite frankly. Judging by the pictures ive seen, it looks to be a young (is that even the right word?) infection.


I sanitized everything fine (I brewed this about a month ago, too.) The guy who gave me it said it was a year old, and when it didnt ferment for a long time, I ofcourse opened it every other day or so to see if anything was happening, to repitch, or whatever. So either way I feel like I am screwed. I dont mind tying up my 5gallon glass fermenter though, which was the plan anyway..