Actual Mold

[iowabrew]

Posted this over in wild brews as well...

Now i know what a pellicle is and looks like. This is in fact a question about actual mold. I brewed up an all Brett L beer a while back maybe 6mo+. I bottled half of it and let the other half in the ferm bucket. It re-formed a nice pellicle on top and there it sat. I just recently within 3 weeks opened it up and pitched some old ommegang beire de mars dregs which contain brett b. These dregs were at least 6mo old just saved in the corked bottle without any beer on top.

I took a peek yesterday and while it has formed a whole new kind of pellicle, there is a single floating island of actual mold on top. A little white island with black/green center.

Is this something i should now dump, or can i rack from underneath it and transfer to a new carboy? (mold scares me)


I can snap a pic later today as well.

 

[chrismcnally]

I did the same racked off half of a 3 month old brett beer and a week later I had a mold like pellicle.

So I will tell you i have had mold on top of my beer twice and had two different results.

one was a berliner weisse, and the mold grew on top of the sour cherries I threw on top. I racked carefully from the bottom and served the beer to everyone. No one noticed and it went well.

The other was a leftover batch of wort that I threw into a carboy that I may have forgot to sanitize, the fermentation went fine but then mold developed. I racked it carefully again, this time, the beer was good for about a week or two and then I could taste the mold so I threw out the rest.

I would really like to add something, maybe like cider makers do, that could neutralize the mold. I loved the first 2 gallons of my brett beer and I am going to cry if I have to get rid of it.

What happened to yours?

 

[daksin]

I don't think the mold can actually grow in the beer, hence why it's growing on the pellicle, but I would definitely toss it. The fact mold spores got in there and can grow shows a more general sanitation issue- you can bet there's other junk in there that you can't see. I wouldn't use it. 6mo is too long to keep yeast/dregs in that kind of condition anyway.