drunkenfud
Member
Hey folks, it's another one of those "is it infected?" threads. I'll try to keep the back story short.
I was going on a 10 day vacation to my home country and wanted to leave a brew fermenting away. It was to be my 7th homebrew and 4th all grain. I ordered some crushed malt, but due to some supply issues it wasn't delivered until the day before I left, and I had other plans that night. I put it in a picnic cooler to protect it to some degree from the summer humidity, where it stayed for 3 weeks in total. Strike 1.
After returning with some goodies from home, I was keen to get cracking the moment I had free time. The malt didn't exactly smell fresh, but it didn't curl my nostril hairs or send me running to the bathroom with puke squirting through my fingers either. Enough malt for a batch costs me about $60 so I used it anyway.
I'd brought back fresh, vacuum packed EKG and fuggles, and was excited to use them - having only used pellets before. They turned out to be kind of yellowy and dry, with a slight stale smell compared to that of pellets (maybe that's normal?), but I'd carried them for over 7000 miles so they were going in Goddammit! Strike 2.
I'd brought back fresh yeast (never used before) in a Wyeast smack pack (ditto). Smacked it like a red headed stepchild. As it turned out, I'd only made a tiny hole in the inner pouch, but I had no way of knowing that the small swelling this produced wasn't normal. What the hell, squirted the rest out and pitched anyway. Strike 3.
Anyway, before that I'd had a couple of small problems during the mash. I'd also messed up my volume calculations after a 90 minute boil (as recommended in my spanking new CAMRA real ale recipe book). There were some problems cooling in a timely manner. All of these pale into insignificance compared to what happened next.
My apartment can get very hot, so I've been putting my glass carboy into a large plastic trashcan full of water to keep it cool. When transferring the wort from my brewpot, the pipe I was using came free, fell into the carboy, and a significant quantity of wort went into the cooling water. Now, this thing is heavy, something I know since I dropped it on my foot on my 5th brew and broke 2 bones. And I am a noodle armed choirboy who didn't want to move it, empty it, then refill it and move it back. So I squirted some bleach into the cooling water and thought "Good enough!". Strike 4 (I know, I know - I should be out by now). I also left the pipe in as there was no easy way out.
This sat for 24 hours with no sign of fermentation. I know I should wait for 3 days, but I was worried about the possibility of infection from the pipe and wanted the yeast to get going as quickly as possible to out compete any nasty microbes. Pack of S04 in the fridge? In it goes. Fermentation happens soon after, I leave it to do its thing.
A couple of weeks later, I check and find this. If you are of a nervous disposition, you should not view this photo:
I immediately slammed the lid back on until I'd recovered my composure, then checked again - the beer in the carboy looked OK. Poured in more bleach, left it for another couple of weeks, occasionally glancing at it to make sure it hadn't managed to evolve a sentient lifeform that would murder me in my bed.
Tonight was to be bottling night, after 4 weeks in the carboy. I got home from work to find the airlock was bubbling again, quite vigorously. I took out the carboy for a look and it's more or less normal. However, there are what look like some chalky lumps floating on the top, pics below, something I've never seen before. Obviously bottling now is out of the question if some kind of fermentation is happening, as indicated by the airlock activity. I would welcome any opinions on whether I should just pour it away, or wait a couple of days and bottle?
Sorry about the length, I'm Scottish and therefore drunk. And thank you for reading.
http://i.imgur.com/fjMXU.jpg
I was going on a 10 day vacation to my home country and wanted to leave a brew fermenting away. It was to be my 7th homebrew and 4th all grain. I ordered some crushed malt, but due to some supply issues it wasn't delivered until the day before I left, and I had other plans that night. I put it in a picnic cooler to protect it to some degree from the summer humidity, where it stayed for 3 weeks in total. Strike 1.
After returning with some goodies from home, I was keen to get cracking the moment I had free time. The malt didn't exactly smell fresh, but it didn't curl my nostril hairs or send me running to the bathroom with puke squirting through my fingers either. Enough malt for a batch costs me about $60 so I used it anyway.
I'd brought back fresh, vacuum packed EKG and fuggles, and was excited to use them - having only used pellets before. They turned out to be kind of yellowy and dry, with a slight stale smell compared to that of pellets (maybe that's normal?), but I'd carried them for over 7000 miles so they were going in Goddammit! Strike 2.
I'd brought back fresh yeast (never used before) in a Wyeast smack pack (ditto). Smacked it like a red headed stepchild. As it turned out, I'd only made a tiny hole in the inner pouch, but I had no way of knowing that the small swelling this produced wasn't normal. What the hell, squirted the rest out and pitched anyway. Strike 3.
Anyway, before that I'd had a couple of small problems during the mash. I'd also messed up my volume calculations after a 90 minute boil (as recommended in my spanking new CAMRA real ale recipe book). There were some problems cooling in a timely manner. All of these pale into insignificance compared to what happened next.
My apartment can get very hot, so I've been putting my glass carboy into a large plastic trashcan full of water to keep it cool. When transferring the wort from my brewpot, the pipe I was using came free, fell into the carboy, and a significant quantity of wort went into the cooling water. Now, this thing is heavy, something I know since I dropped it on my foot on my 5th brew and broke 2 bones. And I am a noodle armed choirboy who didn't want to move it, empty it, then refill it and move it back. So I squirted some bleach into the cooling water and thought "Good enough!". Strike 4 (I know, I know - I should be out by now). I also left the pipe in as there was no easy way out.
This sat for 24 hours with no sign of fermentation. I know I should wait for 3 days, but I was worried about the possibility of infection from the pipe and wanted the yeast to get going as quickly as possible to out compete any nasty microbes. Pack of S04 in the fridge? In it goes. Fermentation happens soon after, I leave it to do its thing.
A couple of weeks later, I check and find this. If you are of a nervous disposition, you should not view this photo:
I immediately slammed the lid back on until I'd recovered my composure, then checked again - the beer in the carboy looked OK. Poured in more bleach, left it for another couple of weeks, occasionally glancing at it to make sure it hadn't managed to evolve a sentient lifeform that would murder me in my bed.
Tonight was to be bottling night, after 4 weeks in the carboy. I got home from work to find the airlock was bubbling again, quite vigorously. I took out the carboy for a look and it's more or less normal. However, there are what look like some chalky lumps floating on the top, pics below, something I've never seen before. Obviously bottling now is out of the question if some kind of fermentation is happening, as indicated by the airlock activity. I would welcome any opinions on whether I should just pour it away, or wait a couple of days and bottle?
Sorry about the length, I'm Scottish and therefore drunk. And thank you for reading.
http://i.imgur.com/fjMXU.jpg
