Pellicle Photo Collection

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If it's just too vinegary you can use it to cook with. No joke, it's good. Otherwise, there are so many reasons to throw out a sour beer. Some things don't get better. Acetic (vinegar) character is one of those things, but not the worst one.
 
TastyAdventure said:
Btw it got extremely oxidized (for a sour) and now tastes like vinegar...
Click to expand...
looks like you aged this beer in a plastic bucket - that probably let in too much O2, and either the brett or (more likely) acetobacter created acetic acid, AKA vinegar. this flavor will not age out.

if that plastic equipment were mine (bucket, auto-siphon, etc.), i would throw it out. i would be nervous about acetobacter potentially hiding out in the scratches and not being killed by star san.
 
sweetcell said:
looks like you aged this beer in a plastic bucket - that probably let in too much O2, and either the brett or (more likely) acetobacter created acetic acid, AKA vinegar. this flavor will not age out.



if that plastic equipment were mine (bucket, auto-siphon, etc.), i would throw it out. i would be nervous about acetobacter potentially hiding out in the scratches and not being killed by star san.
Click to expand...


Yeah, it all I had at the time. The plan was to transfer once my glass opened up, but it turned to vinegar in 2.5 months. I peeked in it a lot, and took a few gravity samples as well.
I threw out that bucket
 
TastyAdventure said:
it turned to vinegar in 2.5 months. I peeked in it a lot, and took a few gravity samples as well.
Click to expand...
ugh, that's rough - and fast!

jay goodwin, on the sour hour, encourages folks to "taste along the way", "accompany the beer on its journey", etc - which is easier and safer to do if you have a large quantity of beer in a barrel, with a vinnie nail, etc. regular tasting on the homebrew level can lead to way too much O2 getting in to the fermentor. so as much as i respect jay, i advocate the "set it and forget it" method. the beer is unlikely to be ready in less than 8 months, so leave it alone until then. i typically don't touch mine for a year.
 
TastyAdventure said:
Wow. Weird. I've read to never, ever throw out a sour beer, bc age can sometimes make it better. Is vinegar beer an exception?
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That is possibly the worst advice I have ever read on HBT and that is really saying something.
 
I think the advice being referenced is to the give your first beers some time as some off flavors will age out. This is in regards to most new brewers tendency to taste green beer and say their beer is awful and get dissuaded. I havent seen it in regards to sour beer though. I have aged an accidental infection beer that turned out interesting.

As for vinegar beer? Nope, no fixing that. Once its vinegar its not turning back into beer. The damage is done.
 
I need some help with this one. This is a jar of reserved cake from an ECY20 batch. There was no pellicle for probably a couple months. Then it grew a thick off white one. Now, several months later, areas of that pellicle have turned grey. It's not grey stuff on the pellicle, the pellicle itself has changed color in these spots. You can't see the texture in the white areas so well in this picture, but the texture is identical across the whole thing.

The jar hasn't been opened at all until today to take this picture. The smell was great yeasty sour aroma, nothing off about it. I was hoping to pitch this into some future batch, but I'm not sure if the grey areas are just pellicle, or something more nefarious. Any insight or advice would be appreciated.

Cheers.

image.jpg
 
TAK said:
I need some help with this one. This is a jar of reserved cake from an ECY20 batch. There was no pellicle for probably a couple months. Then it grew a thick off white one. Now, several months later, areas of that pellicle have turned grey. It's not grey stuff on the pellicle, the pellicle itself has changed color in these spots. You can't see the texture in the white areas so well in this picture, but the texture is identical across the whole thing.

The jar hasn't been opened at all until today to take this picture. The smell was great yeasty sour aroma, nothing off about it. I was hoping to pitch this into some future batch, but I'm not sure if the grey areas are just pellicle, or something more nefarious.
Click to expand...
the fact that it smells good is a positive sign.

idea: brew up 3/4 gallons of 1.040 wort (good use for extract) and throw it in a one-gallon container along with the ECY34 weirdness. give it a month or two and then evaluate.
 
Finally a couple better pictures from a few of my current sours.

bFGhcO0.jpg

~7 month lambic with Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic. With numerous bottle dregs.

s6zJT7c.jpg

~5 month Flanders Red with Wyeast 3763 Roeselare. Also added dregs from a couple bottles of Duchesse De Bourgogne, though I'm not sure if it was going to add anything viable.
 
I think one of my sours from last fall got "sick" recently. Really hard to get a decent picture though, lots of reflection on the glass from the overhead lights.

20150728_073554_zpsxduajwak.jpg


20150728_073904_zpsmo2wjr2y.jpg


20150728_073816_zpsnj71shm2.jpg
 
Finally have a really pretty pellicle to show off. 2 year old blueberry saison with lacto (not sure which ones, it's from a yogurt culture so it's a mix) and any of the little beasties that survived on the blueberries. Going to pick 5lbs of blueberries and transfer on top of the fresh berries for a month before bottling.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1438357323.640627.jpg
 
TAK said:
burninator said:
Interesting, I had a big bubbly pellicle on a beer fermented with these dregs (among a couple of other things), but after transferring to secondary, a new one has formed that looks just like this.
Click to expand...

Mine is an accumulation of small starters from 8 or so bottles. My guess is that the fermentation, and thus CO2 production was pretty much done from each starter as I added them to the whole. So, there wasn't anything to push bubbles into the pellicle.
Click to expand...

Update: This is what it looked like after adding a 2-3 more small individual starters from some more bottles. After the original pellicle formed and I dumped more in, it definitely roused gas and made the pellicle more interesting.

This is way up in the neck of a 1L flask. I just decanted and pitched into a quart of starter to free up the flask. The decanted starter beer tastes fantastic.

image.jpg
 

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