First attempt of malting barley. Infection followed

[perastikos]

Please excuse me if i'm in a wrong section.
A few months ago, i tried to make my own malt for the first time. I bought 6.6pounds of barley from a feed store, and tried to malt it.
Everything went well, except for the fact that i didn't have the right equipment to dry it down to 4-5% moisture. I used my oven with the smallest possible thermostat setting, but without airflow.

So the malt i created was not very dry and so i couldn't remove the rootlets from the grains. They wouldn't fall off easily. I guess it wasn't fully modified as well. In addition to these concerns, i don't have a grain mill, so i did my best to crush them with a food processor. The result was bad, and i believe i had a large percentage of uncrushed grains along with pulverized ones.

I was eager to try anyway, so after 2 weeks i decided to make a batch.

Mashing:
20minutes at 113 Fahrenheit
40minutes at 140 Fahrenheit
2,5 hours trying to keep the temperature around 149 degrees Fahrenheit
and lastly 20minutes mashout at 167degrees.

Preboil grabity: 1.020
Afterboil gravity: 1.030 and post boil volume 3.04 us gal

I was out of yeast as well, but i had a vase of harvested yeast in the fridge, for at least 3 months old.
The fermentation started right away and it lasted 1 or 2 days but i bottled after two weeks.
Final gravity was 1.013

But the surface of the fermentor showed some kind of infection. Here are the pictures:






The following image is from the boiling kettle, at the time of bottling.
I left my boiling kettle on my balcony/porch in order to see what happens. Of course it wasn't air tight, but the lid was on. I think there are at least 3-4 colonizers, but i don't know who they are.


When i bottled, there was a malty smell of course but also another odor not common to beer. I could describe it like mold mixed with hops or something like that. Not very appealing though. This is the bottled beer:


Today, 2 months after bottling, the beer is still hazy as it were the day i bottled (picture above). Carbonation is as expected, no gushing out or something like that. Ph is around 5.2. The odor i smelled the day i bottled is still here. I have tasted a few sips and the strange odor is there as well. But it isn't like vinegar or something.
I"m afraid to drink it and probably i will through it away.

What is your opinion about the infection? What is it and where it might have come from?

P.S. please excuse me for any language mistakes and for the long text.

 

[Darwin18]

If you reached a boil post-mash then the infection is likely a result of poor sanitation. I doubt your barley experiment had an impact on this infection. It definitely looks like you have mold in the 3rd picture.

I'm confused though...you're mentioning your fermenter but also mentioning leaving your boiling kettle outside.

 

[Imperator85]

I agree...it most likely is a result of sanitation issues rather than the malting experiment. The boil would have killed off any opportunistic organisms. After the boil, however...

 

[perastikos]

I'm sorry if i wasn't clear enough.
The 3rd picture is a picture of the boiling kettle trub 2 weeks after the boil.
It has nothing to do with the fermentation bucket etc.

I didn't clean the boiling kettle, but decided to keep it because of this:
The volume of my kettle is 20 us gal. The level of the wort was low (post boil volume=3gal) and so the surfaces of the kettle were low in temperature all the time during the boil. By low temperature i mean warm but not hot. I could keep touching the upper walls of the kettle without burning my hand but feeling warm metal.
In addition to that, when i put my wort chiller inside in order to sanitize it (a classic copper tubing), half of it was outside the boiling wort, and i was afraid of steam that would condense on the surface of the tubing, washing away microbes inside the wort.

Low starting gravity isn't something that could lead to infections?

I use star san for sanitizing my equipment, and i've brewed 13 batches since now. I never had a problem.

 

[Darwin18]

All gravity is a measure of the amount of sugars in the fluid. It has nothing at all to do with infections. Did you boil your wort, or not? It's not clear from your post.

 

[perastikos]

Of course i boiled for more than 90 minutes. I think it was 110 minutes, in order to vaporize more water and increase final gravity.

According to some literature, beers with alcohol, lower than 3.6% are more prone to infections than beers with higher alochol. That's why i am asking about other's experiences in low gravity=>low alcohol beers.

For example:
http://books.google.gr/books?id=C5t...page&q=low alcohol beer contamination&f=false