Infected Cider. Taste fine....for now?

[Hoptorious]

This year I got my hands on a fair amount of apples, about 100 lbs of 4 or 5 varieties although I don't know the names. I juiced and pressed them after washing and brought the cider up to 165F for about 60 minutes. (I thought I had some campden tablets, but alas I did not and the homebrew shop is not so local) I thought this would be an OK technique for pasteurization and so I chilled down to 68F and pitched a hydrated pack of champagne yeast to ferment. This was all about a month ago and everything seemed to moving along just fine. High krausen came and went and took the cider down to 1.000 (previously 1.050). The surface of the cider was relatively free of any kind of krausen or bubbles for a few days until I noticed some fine white bubbles appear on the surface. It looks a lot like spit(sorry for the poor pic quality), relatively white with bubbles of varying sizes. It has grown now each day that I have been watching it so I'm pretty positive it is infected, but with what I'm not sure. I tasted a sample this morning and it taste fine. A very slight tartness is there, but some of the apples were sour. It certainly doesn't taste bad just young, which brings me to my question.

My intent for this cider was for it to be for the holidays and conditioning until then will really do the flavor good. But I obviously cant just leave it in there with whatever is growing with it. Should I just drop in some campden tablets? I don't know if this will really kill whatever is in there. And will the flavor continue to develop if it does kill everything, including the yeast? Is there anything else I should be thinking of doing?

Thank you in advance for all the advice!

 

[UndeadFred]

I used to ferment cider wild all the time. I would guess it will be fine but I hate to tell you that with 100 lbs of it....

 

[Hoptorious]

I used to ferment cider wild all the time. I would guess it will be fine but I hate to tell you that with 100 lbs of it....

Do you recall anything like this every popping up? I guess with a wild ferment it must have looked pretty crazy. How long did those take?

 

[DaMonkey]

Thank you in advance for all the advice!

Looks like CO2 to me, but its too long after fermentation. Your Carboy is so dirty so I assume you haven't racked it yet. You say its been at least 1 month, why have you not racked it? You have so much head room, that's your issue.

You should rack it and hit it with k-meta (campden) and k-sorbate. You won't be able to carbonate but you can add sugar. This is the process to sweeten it anyways.

 

[Hoptorious]

Your right, I have not racked yet. I was just waiting for fermentation to really finish out. I'm so used to beer being able to sit around in primary I guess it never really crossed my mind. I'll rack it to secondary with some campden.

Will the flavor still develop with time after the campden?

If I pitched a little more yeast and some sugar a day before bottling would it carb then?

 

[DaMonkey]

Your right, I have not racked yet. I was just waiting for fermentation to really finish out. I'm so used to beer being able to sit around in primary I guess it never really crossed my mind. I'll rack it to secondary with some campden.

Will the flavor still develop with time after the campden?

If I pitched a little more yeast and some sugar a day before bottling would it carb then?

K-meta shouldn't impact flavor as long as you use it as directed.

As long as you do not use K-sorbate you should be able to bottle carb. If the infection does not go away you should use K-sorbate.

 

[j1n]

Doesn't look infected to me....

 

[Hoptorious]

I racked this cider to a smaller carboy after treating it with some campden. It seems to be fine now, no activity in the airlock. I'll keep this thread posted with the results.