Flakes = Kiss this batch goodbye?

jaymack · Oct 18, 2005

Well, I assumed the worst and dumped it, but I had a batch of Bitter Ale (based on the Cooper's Recipe) in my Secondary. After a week, there was some flake-like, whitish grey creatures forming on top.

Anything in particular that would have casued this besides the usual suspects of infection? I thought perhaps I had transferred to the Secondary too early, though all bubbling had ceased.

Cheers,
J

Orfy · Oct 18, 2005

Transfering to secondary too early in it's self shouldn't cause infection unless it picked up bugs on the way.

Waldo · Oct 18, 2005

I had a similar experience, little spots that looked just like patches of mold, ended up being super teeny tiny bubbles, I was convinced the beer was bad but after a few days the tiny bubbles got bigger and then it was obvious. I was darn near ready to dump my batch but checked here first, and the old pro's here saved my beer.

Sasquatch · Oct 18, 2005

If anything, racking too early just overflows your carboy and gives you a nice layer of C02 on top... Unless what you were seeing was some strange yeast globby, I'd say you got contaminated somewhere along the line. Did you sanitize your carboy right before transferring?

ScottT · Oct 18, 2005

Yep, another premature ejection.

jaymack · Oct 19, 2005

Carboy was thoroughly cleaned and sanitized.

Im still confident I did the right thing. The odor, when dumping, was not pleasant. Hard to place, but not liek anything I've noticed before in a homebrew.
And these were a good 1 to 1 1/2 inch size flake-like things that had been present for about 4 days now.

Waldo · Oct 19, 2005

Mine smelled fine and the spots were only 1/2 inch at the largest most were 1/4 inch. I was convinced they were mold, moldy plates and glasses were a common occurance at some of friends apartments. But if yours had a definate funk then I agree you did the right thing.

rhinostylee · Oct 19, 2005

RIP to your beer, man. At least you didn't find out after you bottled an entire batch. My first batch of beer tasted like piss and was undrinkable (but did have a high alcohol content) and I was stuck with 55 bottles of the stuff. My brother came home from the bars one day and drank 6 of them anyway and ended up puking his guts out! It was great.