glittertrash
New Member
Hi all,
I am not a highly experienced brewer. My total brewing background is about a dozen gingerbeer batches in the past 2 years, with a basic champagne yeast + ginger/sugar/lemon syrup process. Of those brews, one went bad with a sulphur-producing bacteria (I threw it out, yuck), the rest have all been dry, delicious & strong enough to get drunk on.
So, this year I decided to try elderflower champagne. 2 batches, so far.
1. The first batch, I added no extra yeast. Soaked the flower heads for 24 hours in sugar/lemon/vinegar mix, strained out, bottled in sterilised plastic soda bottles.
2. The second batch, I mixed it up the same way in the vat, but added a sprinkle of my champagne yeast, and left it for 48 hours.
Now, when I went to bottle out batch#2, I discovered that my 10L vat contained 10 litres of thick, viscous, egg-white consistency slime. It smelled deliciously of elderflowers, but no way was I game to taste it. I panicked and dumped it straight out. When I dumped it out it was apparent that the entire vat consisted of this slime- it was not sitting on the surface, it was a totally uniform polysaccharide slime all the way through. THEN I came online and did my research and learned all about Acetobacter & other slime-producing friends.
Now I have gone & taken a closer look at my 8 bottles of batch#1, which are on day 6 in the bottle, and all of the bottles have snot-like globules hanging around, some near the surface, some at the bottom of the bottles. It doesn't look at all the same as the uniform egg-white slime that batch#1 turned into, but it's still not very appealing. I took one bottle cap off and smelled it, and it smells fine- sweet, elderflowery & a bit yeasty. The carbonation bubbles are just beginning to appear.
So my questions to you all are as follows:
1. Is batch #1 recoverable? Is it possible that if I leave it the floating slime will somehow 'clear'? Or should give up & dump it out?
2. If I want to get another elderflower brew on before the season finished, any tips for how to prevent slime-producing bacteria having a party in my brews? I would plan to step up the sterilisation of all tools (from 'very clean' to 'surgically sterile'), and I am guessing the next step might be to scald the elderflowers to kill off the wild organisms & just rely on the champagne yeast to ferment it?
3. Can anyone recommend an elderflower champagne recipe that relies on added yeast, rather than wild yeast?
Anyway I am not that bothered by this whole experience, learning about polysaccharide slime-producing bacterias has been quite fascinating, and my inner 8 year old is delighting in the grossness of home-brewed snot! I would just like to hope that I will wind up with some delicious elderflower champagne along with the learning experience...
I am not a highly experienced brewer. My total brewing background is about a dozen gingerbeer batches in the past 2 years, with a basic champagne yeast + ginger/sugar/lemon syrup process. Of those brews, one went bad with a sulphur-producing bacteria (I threw it out, yuck), the rest have all been dry, delicious & strong enough to get drunk on.
So, this year I decided to try elderflower champagne. 2 batches, so far.
1. The first batch, I added no extra yeast. Soaked the flower heads for 24 hours in sugar/lemon/vinegar mix, strained out, bottled in sterilised plastic soda bottles.
2. The second batch, I mixed it up the same way in the vat, but added a sprinkle of my champagne yeast, and left it for 48 hours.
Now, when I went to bottle out batch#2, I discovered that my 10L vat contained 10 litres of thick, viscous, egg-white consistency slime. It smelled deliciously of elderflowers, but no way was I game to taste it. I panicked and dumped it straight out. When I dumped it out it was apparent that the entire vat consisted of this slime- it was not sitting on the surface, it was a totally uniform polysaccharide slime all the way through. THEN I came online and did my research and learned all about Acetobacter & other slime-producing friends.
Now I have gone & taken a closer look at my 8 bottles of batch#1, which are on day 6 in the bottle, and all of the bottles have snot-like globules hanging around, some near the surface, some at the bottom of the bottles. It doesn't look at all the same as the uniform egg-white slime that batch#1 turned into, but it's still not very appealing. I took one bottle cap off and smelled it, and it smells fine- sweet, elderflowery & a bit yeasty. The carbonation bubbles are just beginning to appear.
So my questions to you all are as follows:
1. Is batch #1 recoverable? Is it possible that if I leave it the floating slime will somehow 'clear'? Or should give up & dump it out?
2. If I want to get another elderflower brew on before the season finished, any tips for how to prevent slime-producing bacteria having a party in my brews? I would plan to step up the sterilisation of all tools (from 'very clean' to 'surgically sterile'), and I am guessing the next step might be to scald the elderflowers to kill off the wild organisms & just rely on the champagne yeast to ferment it?
3. Can anyone recommend an elderflower champagne recipe that relies on added yeast, rather than wild yeast?
Anyway I am not that bothered by this whole experience, learning about polysaccharide slime-producing bacterias has been quite fascinating, and my inner 8 year old is delighting in the grossness of home-brewed snot! I would just like to hope that I will wind up with some delicious elderflower champagne along with the learning experience...