Infection?

Hey all.

Still pretty green at brewing. I bottle primed a batch of cerveza. It's been about 13 days and I've enjoyed quite a few brews from this batch. I always check my bottles before I take them from their fermenting area to the fridge.

All my small bottles 355ml don't have this...

"White snowflake" like substance falling from the beer level. It doesn't appear to have formed over the surface but more around the edge.

I sanitize thoroughly with starsan and hope it's not an infection.

The bottles fermented at 21-23° with a coopers yeast.

I will try to get photos of the crap falling. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1434767591.985048.jpg

I hope the picture can show a little of the white crud line on the other side of the bottle.

 

I guess I need to taste one...
More white crud building at liquid surface. Falls to bottom once disturbed. Looks as if film is growing on top of beer. Not all bottles have it.

Do I need to throw the bottles away? Or dump, clean, reuse

 

Just leave them for now (don't dump), but definitely taste one.

It's hard to say for sure what that crud is, or if it will have a bad impact on your beer.

It is probably contamination, but not all infections cause off flavors. If your beer is not gushing and it does not have any obvious off-flavors, you're probably okay for now...off-flavors may develop later (or not).

 

I decided to open one that was just packed with infection. It bubbled and fizzed more than a coke.

My wife and I had enjoyed quite a few already and they taste nice. Now that's I've noticed the infection, 90% of the bottles I've checked are infected. My first infection.

I thought I was fine using the spigot in my fermenter to bottle from. Not sure where the infection could of came from, but I do know the bottles that were bottled first have a much higher amount of mold/ wild yeast on top. The last bottles to be filled seem to have no ring around the neck.

Very disappointed

 

If you know they are mostly infected, I would open them all ASAP before they start exploding. Trust me, flying shards of glass that can even shoot into other rooms....I'm lucky Ive never been home when ones blown up. You could loose an eye easily

 

I just went through the whole stock and have separated everything. I will be opening all the bottles and dumping. I'll proceed with caution.

Thanks for the heads up.

I guess I need to bottle brush the bottles and hope to remove all issues.

 

Maybe it came from the spigot on your fermenter, it maybe had crap in there and as you continued to fill from it got cleaner so the beers you filled towards the end had less crap in the spigot to cause an infection in those.

 

That's my guess as well.

I will be buying a fermenter and strictly using it for fermenting.

I will turn my current fermenter into a bottling bucket and this way I can just boil some water/dextrose to batch prime.

Too bad I had to learn the hard way

 

Don't dump.. just put them in the fridge and start drinking.