What is this???

I have a thin ropey layer of what looks like light fabric over my imperial Christmas ale. It smells like yeast (we used a bit more than we should have admittedly) but I'm concerned it might be mold? Any help??

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It looks like a bacterial pellicle to me. What yeast did you pitch?

https://www.google.com/search?q=bac...X&ved=0ahUKEwiuu6zfw6vPAhUs2oMKHflSDs0QsAQINQ

 

Nice!

 

Not mold, but definitely an infection of some sort.

 

Thats a wicked cool looking infection... hope it doesnt sour the beer!

 

Bacterial infection. Congrats, your beer is most likely ruined. Don't ever use that bucket again, you won't be able to sanitize it. You've been warned.

 

Definitely a pellicle cuased by an infection.

You should post that pic in this thread. Lots of cool looking growths in there.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=174033

 

So can I syphon the beer under the pellicle and rack to a secondary?

 

Nobody will shoot you if you do. A jail term would not be in your future. There have been a LOT of people here who have tried, some may even report success.

HOWEVER, every step you carry out from here on would just expose more of your equipment to that infection. Racking cane, tubing, secondary vessel... and if you carried it to bottling then it's the bottling bucket as well. Even if you did manage to adequately clean most of that equipment, all it takes is one piece to squeak by, and the infection will keep coming up again and again.

I know it sucks to lose a bucket, the cost of the materials, and a day of brewing time. That said, my vote would be to get rid of it, avoid spending even more time and money on a brew that has gone to the Dark Side, and start over with a fresh fermenter.

SILVER LINING: It's only September 26. You have three months to try to brew it again and still have it ready by Christmas.

 

Definitely worth a shot! Taste it. I have had a number of "unintentionally soured" beers from other brewers that ended up being pretty decent; a few even good. I had an infection in a cider once that turned out quite well. That one ended up being a lactobacillus infection and I have since repeated it intentionally a few times. If you keg especially, as storing the beer at cool temperatures will greatly retard the progression of the infection.

And I wouldn't discard your fermenter as suggested by others. I think as a group we tend to blindly repeat "prior advice" and quite alot of questionable advice gets passed along as law. I would sanitize it with a proper bleach solution and put it back into rotation. I readily use my plastic fermenters for sours with proper sanitation and I have never had an infected beer I could attribute to the equipment (and I have only ever had two in my 4+ years of brewing).

 

Plus one, I learned the hard way on this type of problem. I went out of town one weekend while I had a pumpkin ale just starting to ferment, and the airlock popped out and it sat there for 5 days open. Came back to just a lovely dog ass smell that filled the house. Well I pitched that batch, few weeks later I tried to ferment something else in it (I think it was my irish red) and wow that one probably smelled worst... I hated to but that bucket is now gone

 

Good to know. This is a 7.5gal speidel fermentor and I really don't want to replace it.

I'll taste it tonight and see if it's worth saving.

Thanks for all the help guys!

 

You can, but the infection is all through the brew, not just in the growth on the surface.

 

My advice is based on personal experience. I had tried everything to sanitize plastic after an infection. To no avail. I had a string of several batches go sour on me after the first one before I finally got smart enough to throw away the bucket and buy new ones. No problems after that.

 

I had exactly the same experience. Disinfecting with bleach didn't get rid of the bucket infection - had to replace it, along with tubing, etc. The bottles were fine after bleaching.

 

I've been able to reuse a bucket after an infection. I went with the nuclear option (bleach) and then used a few cheap grain bills before trusting it again.

 

Just as a side question: anyone ever try boiling water (or nearly boiling) to sterilize a plastic fermenter? It probably wouldn't work with a Better Bottle or Big Mouth Bubbler, but a bucket or one of the fermenters the OP had would probably survive the heat...

 

I did once, as per the advice of the guy who runs the LHBS I frequent. I don't have a Better Bottle of BMB, just a standard 30L bucket. The boiled water seemed to do the trick. I've since fermented 3 other beers in that bucket without issue.

 

I've seen pics on hbt of deformed BBs due to "excessive thermal exposure"

btw, that's an awesome looking pellicle. I'd be inclined to set it aside and taste what develops.
Looking at what the "wild" brewing group on hbt seems to go for (and lemme say that some of their pellicles make me gag ) that could be a winner...

Cheers!

 

Speaking from the side of one of the nasty infecting Brewers, the odds on that infection producing tastey results is unlikely, the chances of that Christmas ale doing well with some funk and sour, even less.

Depends on the recipe but I've yet to taste a good sour produced with any amount of IBU's or bitterness related to other items like spices. I bet they exist though.

Do you keg?

 

I've deformed a HDPE bucket by setting it too close to a heater but the ones I've poured boiling wort into didn't deform a bit. One shouldn't have to use boiling water to pasteurize a bucket but that hot of water should take care of the bacteria for sure.

 

Yes, I've tried that. It didn't work. Strong bleach for a week didn't work either. Nothing worked.

This doesn't mean it won't work for you. I'm just giving you my own experience. It depends how deep the wild beasts dug into your plastic. Unfortunately, there's no way to know for certain. In my case, apparently they got in deep and would not leave. YMMV.