California Common Fermentation Infection

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cshulha

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Hello everyone. I have these photos of a California steam ale Im making with mangrove jack California lager yeast. Does this look like an infection. I also have a slight Sulfer smell. I am brewing in 18c. I have been brewing it for 6 days. The recipe says it should be done after 10 days. I left a photo for people to view. The beer tastes ok but it lost some fruit flavors from the hops. IS this normal?

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No evident sign of infection in that pic. Looks perfect from here.
Slight sulfur aroma can happen a few days into fermentation as the yeast start cleaning up after themselves.
Depending on the strain it could be gone in a couple of days.

Don't use recipes for running your fermentor, they're often nonsensical (like, advising two weeks on the yeast for a wheat beer). Do an SG check, compare it against the predicted Final Gravity, let it ride if it isn't there yet, and check again in a couple/few days. If you get two successive SG checks with the same value you can start thinking about packaging.

As for the hop character changes, one should not expect what comes out of the fermentor will have the same aroma intensity as what went in, that's just not going to happen.

Aroma characters will definitely get scrubbed by some degree during fermentation. If desired, one makes up for that by dry hopping...

Cheers!

Hello everyone. I have these photos of a California steam ale Im making with mangrove jack California lager yeast. Does this look like an infection. I also have a slight Sulfer smell. I am brewing in 18c. I have been brewing it for 6 days. The recipe says it should be done after 10 days. I left a photo for people to view. The beer tastes ok but it lost some fruit flavors from the hops. IS this normal?
 
Recipes make some assumptions that those of us that have brewed a bunch know are incorrect. When a recipe says to ferment for a certain amount of days or until the beer reaches a certain final gravity, we know to throw out that info because we know that when we pitch the yeast and close up the fermenter we are no longer in control. Yeast do what yeast do at the pace that the yeast want to do it ar which is majorly affected by the OG, temperature, and pitch rate. Always go by what your hydrometer says, not the recipe and make sure to take samples at least a day apart to be sure the reading isn't still changing.
 
Giving an update. the smell went away after lagering it a week at 3c. Happy new year everyone. Thanks for your help.
 
Looks pretty much like what's going on in my fermenter - also using the mangrove jack (M54). I guess it's what this strain does. Thanks for posting the photo, cshulha.
 
Looks pretty much like what's going on in my fermenter - also using the mangrove jack (M54). I guess it's what this strain does. Thanks for posting the photo, cshulha.

All strains of yeast can do this but often do not. What I see in the picture is bubbles and some break material that has been carried to the surface by these bubbles. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it does not. Probably the best way to keep from worrying about infections when this happens is to throw away the carboys and ferment in bucket where you can't see the process of the fermentation. That process can be ugly.:rockin:
 
"All strains of yeast can do this but often do not." Seems that this strain is more likely to do it than others. Throwing away your carboys probably isn't the best advice - embrace the (ugly) process.
 
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