Is my beer infected?

[Gallagher1424]

My wheat beer has been fermenting for about 10 days now today I noticed that the krausen is starting to get a darker shade to it, which looks a bit different then it did previously. I'm also curious as to why the krausen has not dropped. My question is do you guys think it has been infected?

 

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

looks normal to me, the darker krausen is just dried yeast, which happens when the fermentation starts to slow if it's gotten up into the neck of the carboy like that.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Normal.

 

[BrewInspector]

No, perfectly normal

 

[Gallagher1424]

Thanks guys , was starting to get worried .

 

[jrgtr42]

From looking at the photo, it looks like the krausen has already dropped - that's just gunk left stuck to and dried on the sides. I bet if you look inside, you'll see just a trace of foam left on the top of the beer.

 

[RM-MN]

For your future reference, it is very rare to get an infection in the primary fermenter. You have to be very sloppy with your cleaning or brew in a very dirty area to get enough bacteria in the fermenter to out compete the yeast. Once fermentation starts the production of CO2 stops the bacteria from reproducing and the alcohol and lowered pH keep it that way. To really get an infection going you need the fermentation to have stopped, the beer moved to another container (secondary), and sufficient oxygen for the bacteria to reproduce, plus you need the bacteria to get in the beer.

 

[Dland]

Very rare maybe, and very sloppy, not always. There are some pretty tough "bad critters" out there though that can ruin beer even in a closed fermentor environment.

But agree the OP's brew looks fine. So did some bad batches I had recently though, and quite undrinkable, to the point of unhealthiness probably.