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Diagnose my contaminent

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TotalFluke

New Member
Joined
Aug 16, 2014
Messages
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Location
Boulder
I've just been brewing the following IPA...

1lbs Crystal (15 L)
0.25lbs Crystal (40 L)
9.75lbs Light LME (2.2 L)
0.5lbs Munich LME (9 L)
1oz Horizon Hops 60min
1oz Centenial Hops 10min
1oz Simcoe Hops 5min
1oz Amarillo Hops 0min
Wyeast 1056 American Ale

OG: 1.065

Everything went well for the first two weeks. There was a lot of crud blown out from the beginning that stuck to the outside of the carboy so I couldn't see inside at all.

I was lazy and left my blow out tube in for the whole time rather than swap for an airlock. The blowout tube was inside a small container full of star san.

On the third week I noticed that the blow out container has a layer of something fuzzy growing on it. I guess the star san loses it's effectiveness after a little while exposed to oxygen. But I figured it would be difficult for any infection to get back up the tube.

After three weeks I move it to a higher location in anticipation of to racking into a bottling bucket. This disturbs the water level slightly so that I can see under the crud on the side of the glass. I can see something that I don't expect to see at this stage in the fermentation that looks a lot like the pictures I've seen of pellicle to me.

I took a gravity reading and a sample, the gravity is 1.011 which is the expected finishing gravity. I couldn't identify anything strongly wrong with the taste. There was perhaps a hint of sourness, but it was so subtly that it could easily be my imagination.

I've attached some pictures I took through the narrow gap under the crud, it's not totally obvious but the white stuff looks chalky...

So my questions are as follows...

  1. Can you identify the contamination?
  2. What might happen if I just go ahead and bottle?
  3. What are the alternatives?

Thanks for any help anybody can give me.

infection1.jpg


infection2.jpg
 
That looks like yeast rafts and tiny bubbles from outgassing of CO2 because you disturbed the beer when you moved it and it caused the CO2 to outgas. I'd bottle that right up.

Oh, that tiny bit of sourness might be acetaldehyde, a normal intermediate product of fermentation. It will likely go away in the bottles.
 

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