WTH is this in my beer?

Brewed an Am. Wheat and everything went good. I opened it up to taste about 5 weeks ago. Tasted fine. Due to having a child and being out of town every weekend, I couldnt bottle and keg until tonight. I go down to get the fermenter and this stuff is in there. Tasted a little sour and definitely not like it did a few weeks ago. Is there too much headspace there? It's about 2.5 gallons in a 6 gal ferm. Is it a random sencond yeast?

 

That sure looks like a pellicle to me. You've got a sour started.

 

Yep - that's the pellicle of an infection. Congratulations on your sour!

Could you do me a favour, and make a video of you popping one of those little dusty bubbles? I SO want to do that every time I see these kinds of pics. I might just have to make a sour just so I can do that for myself.

 

While I'm no microbiologist, that looks like the pellicles I've gotten from Brett. My guess is a wild yeast. Could throw of funk or acid in a good way, but could also throw off some nasty phenols, diacetyl, or other flavors your don't want. But it's definitely infected. If you're willing to take a chance, maybe pitch some additional sour bottle dregs (look to The Mad Fermentationist's site for a list of viable dregs) and maybe pitch some commercial mixed sour cultures too (but dregs would be the priority) to get yourself some bug diversity in there and then let it go for a year before bottling it to see what happens.

You could also cold crash it, keg it, and make sure it stays cold, and drink it quickly before it gets worse. Keep in mind that you may then want to keep anything that touches it separate unless you're extremely fastidious with your cleaning and sanitizing, and even then it'd still be safer to at least keep any plastic gear separate from any further non-sour/Brett beers.

Now, if you don't like the taste, don't like sour beers, or just don't want to wait that long, then dump the batch and (assuming the fermenter is plastic, it looks like plastic) pitch the fermenter.

 

Great. How did that happen?

I'm just now producing decent beers after two years. I don't want to mess with sours right now.

That's a brand new fermenter. 2nd batch. I had to chunk my others bc of scratches. Seriously, trash it?

Btw, I found some fruit flies in the airlock. Don't know if one could (or even how) have got in there.

 

Well, you can try and clean it, but plastic is a gamble because even if it's not scratched, it's still somewhat porous. If you want to save it, I would "bleach bomb" the fermenter. Basically fill it to the brim with a fairly concentrated bleach solution, let it sit overnight (the chlorine would probably have all evaporated by then, but I'd let it sit anyway), and then rinse extremely well, then clean with PBW or oxyclean, again rinse extremely well, sanitize it, and then rinse again, and let it air dry. That'll hopefully clean out any and all film the organism leaves behind, kill anything, and then air drying should allow any residual chlorine from the bleach to evaporate. Should knock it out if you're thorough, but some wild bugs are very, very good at defending themselves and even if you can't see it, a tiny little colony that walls itself off in a corner and survives could recontaminate a future batch.

Now, I've followed that procedure after an accidental cross contamination with a sour beer a few years ago, and have used that fermenter afterwards multiple times without issue. So it's possible, but not guaranteed.

 

If Qhrumphf is right and that's a brett pellicle and it sure looks like the pellicles I've gotten from using brett then maybe it won't sour just develop some funk. If you arent going to use the carboy again why not let it ride for a month or 2 and see what flavors develop?

 

Looks like the lacto pellicles I get when I make lacto starters from grain.

In theory, what you are saying could be an issue. In practice, I'm able to ferment clean beers after making a gose in a plastic big mouth bubbler. Personally, I just give a good 30-45 minute soak in ~140F water, and wash with a non-abrasive. I dunno that I'd chuck either the beer or the fermenter, but if knowing 100% that you won't get a subsequent infection is important, just get a new fermenter.

 

Use that ferm for sours ONLY...or pitch it.

Also i will have to disagree with the post a few up saying to keg it.
If you keg it you basically will infect everything you put into that keg.
Instead i suggest bottling the batch.
Once bottled either drink them all very rapidly or let them sit for a very,very long time, and not have much of an expectation from them as the infection could be either very good, or very bad.

 

You'd have to be fastidious about cleaning the keg, same as the fermenter. Or dedicate it as a sour keg. But kegging it allows you to keep it cold to slow the infection, and also allows you to vent pressure. Bottling with an unknown contaminant (we can theorize but without plating and looking under a microscope and someone who really knows what they're looking at, it's all a guess) and then letting it sit warm to carbonate is just asking for bottle bombs, unless you leave it in the fermenter to fully attenuate.

 

Wrong.

First, dump that beer. Nuff said. If you want a sour/funky beer, make one with intent.

Second, your gear is fine, including fermentor and keg. Just sanitize properly after that beer has left the room, and you'll be fine. I've had sour beers on tap and those same taps and kegs are now serving pilsners.

Define "sanitize properly?". Yea, go nuclear on it. Use followed by bleach solution, extra-strength starsan. That's what I've done.

 

Perhaps i should have worded slightly different.
I'm not saying that's it's impossible to remove infection from keg lines,poppets,the keg itself,every component it touches.
HOWEVER
Why subject yourself to all that in the 1rst place.
Call me lazy if you want but the LAST place i'd put an infected batch is into my keg system. But to each their own.

There's been plenty of posts from people saying they got infections and saved them.drank them, and liked them. So not all infections are bad but it's a gamble.

I don't think bottling would be much of an issue for the guy provided he uses the soda bottle method to guage carb. If the intent is to drink them all rapidly, i dont see 2 gallons presenting an issue. Seen plenty of people drink that much in one sitting on many ocasions.

 

Re: re-using equipment after sour/infected beers: The entire world is infected. The bacteria and wild yeast you are protecting your beer from are all over the place. So, keeping the microbes out of your equipment is impossible. You just have to have a good way of sanitizing before use.

Re: that beer above: I've tried to salvage beer with infection. It's just not good. I've also made many sour beers (lacto, brett, etc). They were great. A couple of those wild beers I kegged, carbed, then bottled. Those kegs are in use today. I probably changed the beer lines on them though, don't remember. I also used my normal plastic better bottles. They're full of pilsner at the moment

 

There's a difference between the ambient naturally occuring bacteria getting on gear, and storing food for billions of cells in it. It warrants special attention in my book. But yes, if you clean and sanitize properly it should be fine.

I have salvaged infected beer (or otherwise salvaged) by tossing bugs in a few times and letting it sit. It's rarely as good as something deliberate, but has the potential to be good or great just as much as sucking (even won medals on one). Hence if you don't need the fermenter and can let it sit, no harm seeing what happens just in case, especially if you were going to dump anyway. If you need the fermenter or don't want to wait then by all means dump it.

 

Once again i must say that it isn't impiossible to have infected gear and then clean it well enough as to not infect further batches of beer.
BUT there were these descriptors,
"Define "sanitize properly?". Yea, go nuclear on it. Use followed by bleach solution, extra-strength starsan. That's what I've done."
And "I probably changed the beer lines on them though, don't remember."
So, sure it can be done.....while being an extra PITA to do so. I don't know about the original poster but i personally don't want to add things into my life that are an extra PITA. If anyone else enjoys bleaching their kegs then have at it,not for me. The statements above basically would help somebody come to this conclusion.
"Originally Posted by Paps View Post
Use that ferm for sours ONLY...or pitch it.

Also i will have to disagree with the post a few up saying to keg it.
If you keg it you basically will infect everything you put into that keg.
Instead i suggest bottling the batch.
Once bottled either drink them all very rapidly or let them sit for a very,very long time, and not have much of an expectation from them as the infection could be either very good, or very bad."

Now maybe i should have not stated that "everything" WILL get infected if you bleach your keg,throw it into a blast furnace,detonate some `nuclear` missiles in it......but i'm going on the idea that the OP doesn't want to go through all that. I've read some other threads on here regarding infected batches and many just bottles and drank them quickly before their flavors became very altered thus salvaging their beer vs dumping it. If the guy wants to let the fermentor sit for 6+ months or so then that's their choice and wouldn't be a bad idea if they don't mind it holding up his BB. I stick to my statement of either using that BB only for sours or trash canning it.

 

Side note: wait, so I could put my 100% brett black IPA I have going on tap? I wanted to but figured it would be a pain or near impossible to clean my keg system after. I bottle from my kegs with a beergun so I couldnt want them picking anything up on the way into the bottle

 

Would cold crashing the fermenter prevent that from happening?

The reason I ask is because my dog chewed through my deep freezer power cord (thankfully it was cycled off) and I moved it from 66 degrees to whatever the temp is downstairs. It was kept like that for 5 weeks or so at room temp. Could I have cold crashed it at, say 36 deg, then kept it at that temp for the 5 weeks since I couldn't get to it.

Summary - Does cold temperatures (34-42 deg) inhibit that kind of growth?

Ill disinfect the hell out of it, and keep it around incase I want to do sours later.

Looking back, I've had a few brews that seemed to get that moldy stuff on top. I wouldn't be satisfied with the flavor, so I would let it sit at room temp to see what happens flavor wise, and eventually it formed.

I have a Speigel fermenter on the way. Ill be able to do gravity readings without opening the top, inviting random penicles in.

BTW, that sh*t looks gross. Creeps me out for some reason.

 

Keeping it cold won't stop the bacteria/wild yeast, just hopefully make them go dormant. Best case is it completely stalls them, but may only slow, and in either case as soon as it was warmed up they'd go back to working.

If you're getting it on multiple batches, it means there's a persistent sanitation problem. Either you're not properly cleaning/sanitizing your fermenters, or it's something else. Are you by chance using a diffiusion stone for aerating? Because if they aren't sanitized properly (soaking in cleaner and sanitizer usually isn't enough, best is to either boil or bake the stone) those are a common spreader of unwanted organisms. Wort gets into the tiny pores, doesn't get out, and bugs start growing.

Also pellicles are a symptom of a problem, not the problem in and of itself. Many of my sours never show a pellicle despite having plenty of organisms that could form one, just because of limited oxygen exposure.

Not a good idea to open the fermenter if you don't' have to, but opening it once or twice for a reading shouldn't be enough to cause contamination like that. Would have to be something more direct. Now if there's already a sizeable population from a different source, that's where the oxygen from opening the fermenter can show itself.

 

I did it. So many people warn against it, so maybe they know something that I don't. I served an oud bruin that was fermented with lact. I also served two different porters, one inocculated with brett lambicus and the other with brett claustrisumthing. Anyway, like I said above, that gear is all still in service, no prob.

I can only relate my experiences. Maybe I've been lucky.

 

I was wondering how many posts it was going to take you to come on this thread and say that.


And Yooper here is right. You don't want a lot of headspace in your brews once ferm has slowed down. ESPECIALLY if you keep popping your airlock off.

Perhaps split the batch up into the 1-gallon fermentors or as some might do....sanitize a buncha glass marbles and place those into the fermentor to take up space. (lotta marbles for 2 gals in a 5 gal feme) I've even seen some stores like hobby lobby or whatnot have glass containers with a spigot on them used for serving tea/drinks with a lid on them. If you could get the lid to seal tight and slap an airlock on it one of those might work. (they often are 2-3 gallons in size)

cheers.