I believe I screwed up....

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kcoect

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Been brewing for almost a year and have had more than nine successful brews and then I do this...
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Over the past weekend I brewed ten gallons (BIAB) of American Wheat Ale, and after running through the counterflow into the first fermenter, I oxiginated with pure O2 with an unsanitized wand... I realized it when I finished and put it in the sanitizing bucket to work on the second fermenter... Now the wort in that fermenter is lighter in color and smells a little different from it's twin sitting next to it...

So I guess I have my first infection, so my question is what to do about it? Dump it and call it a loss? Odds are very small from everything I've read that this will end well...

:(
 
looks like you maybe got more trub in one than the other. otherwise, the krausens look similar and normal, not like a pellicle at all

I'd let it ride. at worse you have an American Sour Wheat Ale, which could be quite tasty
 
Even if it is infected, it could be infected with something delicious, and you could get a wonderfully weird sour beer that you are completely incapable of reproducing intentionally. RDWHAHB
 
It's not trub, they both were originally the same color (and the darker fermenter is the one that would have gotten more trub since it was filled all the way from the bottom of the kettle)... I guess only time will tell...
 
If yeast took off in a reasonable time, I don't think you have anything to worry about.
 
Well, I bottled it over the weekend and the lighter colored fermenter had a strange kind of skin on top of it and has a slightly stronger smell than the darker colored fermented. Also the darker fermenter drained clean. I was going to combine them in the bottling bucket for a more consistent product, but after seeing the funky skin on the lighter one, I only combined about half a case in the bucket, bottled that, then bottled the rest separately... We'll see what I get when I open one in a week to see if bottle bombs are building...
 
Here are pictures of what it looked like when I started draining the fermenter, I've also included a picture of it's twin that was brewed in the same batch... Nothing on top of that one...

Anyone have a guess as to what may have been "infecting" it?

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Looks infected BUT if you left the top behind you may have good beer... Beer is pretty resilient!

Definetly left the top behind... I'll try it this weekend to see how its doing and report back...
 

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