Green Scum / Floaters and the paranoid brewer.

[MikeScott]

At Christmas I tried a batch of beer I had made, luckily it was only a 1 gallon batch, and there was something terribly wrong with it. It tasted like water, but with a funky taste to it. I figured I must have had an infection in it.

So now I’m a little paranoid, and I’m wondering if I did something wrong with my last batch of Centennial Blonde. It has these green floaty things on the top.

I made a 10 gallon batch, and split it between two carboys, and used a starter of a American Ale yeast in one, and a package of Nottingham yeast in the other. The American Ale yeast carboy has these green things across the entire carboy, and the nottingham yeast carboy only has a few of them, in a 4 inch circle.

I took a whiff of both carboys, and they smell fine to me. I’m just a little concerned since I had the problem with that 1 gallon batch, and I was planning on putting a Stout on the yeast cake of the American Ale Carboy.

Am I being paranoid, or do I have a problem? I'm hoping it's just the krausen, and I know that the forum sees a whole lot of posts like this, so thanks for putting up wth me, and thanks in advance for any help

Here's some pictures to help with the diagnosis.
One:

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Two:

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Three:

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[nakros]

It looks fine to me. Generally, if it smells ok and tastes ok, then it's fine -- RDWHAHB.

I had a couple of batches infected by fruit flies and the smell and taste was enough to make you gag. If you are still wondering whether it is an infection or not after smelling and tasting it, then it's not an infection.

 

[bonzombiekitty]

Looks OK to me too. I've had something similar before, probably just some junk that's floated up to the surface on CO2. If you give it a light shake, it may start to fall out.

 

[robbieo13]

Looks like hop matter. I have the same thing going on with my batches now, ever since i stopped using hop bags.

 

[Revvy]

That is the remnants of a krausen with hopscum in it, it's perfectly normal.

And I hate to break it to you but more than likely your 1 gallon batch wasn't infected either it was more than likely green and undercarbed, which would account for the thiness. If your beer is infected it would smell/taste sour, like vomit or like vinegar, everything else is more that likely green.

The biggest thing is that you beer has a LOOOOOONG journey over the next minimum three weeks that it is going to need to carb an condition.

It's really only down the line, AFTER the beer has been fermented (and often after it has bottle conditioned even,) that you concern yourself with any flavor issues if they are still there.

I think too many new brewers focus to much on this stuff too early in the beer's journey. And they panic unnecessarily.

A lot of the stuff you smell/taste initially more than likely ends up disappearing either during a long primary/primary & secondary combo, Diacetyl rests and even during bottle conditioning.

If I find a flavor/smell, I usually wait til it's been in the bottle 6 weeks before I try to "diagnose" what went wrong, that way I am sure the beer has passed any window of greenness.

Fementation is often ugly, smelly and crappy tasting in the beginning and perfectly normal. The various conditioning phases, be it long primary, secondarying, D-rests, bottle conditioning, AND LAGERING, are all part of the process where the yeast, and co2 correct a lot of the normal production of the byproducts of fermentation.

Lagering is a prime example of this. Lager yeast are prone to the production of a lot of byproducts, the most familiar one is sulphur compounds (rhino farts) but in the dark cold of the lagering process, which is at the minimum of a month (I think many homebrewers don't lager long enough) the yeast slowly consumes all those compounds which results in extremely clean tasting beers if done skillfully.

Ales have their own version of this, but it's all the same.

If you are sampling your beer before you have passed a 'window of greeness" which my experience is about 3-6 weeks in the bottle, then you are more than likely just experiencing an "off flavor" due to the presence of those byproducts (that's what we mean when we say the beer is "green" it's still young and unconditioned.) but once the process is done, over 90% of the time the flavors/smells are gone.

Of the remaining 10%, half of those may still be salvageable through the long time storage that I mention in the Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer

And the remaining 50% of the last 10% are where these tables and lists come into play. To understand what you did wrong, so you can avoid it in the future.

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

But don't be so quick to judge a beer, or declare it infected...it really is hard to ruin a batch, and sadly most new brewers are so paranoid that they often dump perfectly fine beers becasue they just didn't taste right, in the fermenter..or after a few days in the bottle. Not knowing that those tastes are normal.

And just need more time.

If you read this, you ill see that with most brewing "problems" all the beer ends up needing is more time in the bottle. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

Don't commit beericide so soon next time. You would be surprised how awesome something can turn out down the line.

 

[MikeScott]

Thanks to everyone that replied! My main reason for concern is that if it was a problem, I didn't want to put another batch of wort on top of it and end up with 2 bad batches. I feel a much better now! I'll have to give it a shake and see if it falls out.

And I hate to break it to you but more than likely your 1 gallon batch wasn't infected either it was more than likely green and undercarbed, which would account for the thiness. If your beer is infected it would smell/taste sour, like vomit or like vinegar, everything else is more that likely green.

Revvy, thanks a bunch for your reply, you helped me out once before with some Apfelwein that I was worried about, as well as pointed out the flaws with satellite fermentors. I do appreciate it.

I actually did 2 1 gallon SMASH batches, both using Vienna malt, one using Cascade hops, and one using a mystery hop that grows in a coworkers yard. The myster hop SMASH is terrific, and doesn't have any issues. It's the Cascade batch that is thin and funky. They both have been conditioning the same amount of time.

I brewed them in mid October, so they should have had enough time, at least I would think so.

Don't commit beericide so soon next time. You would be surprised how awesome something can turn out down the line.

I haven't committed beericide yet. I still have 6 out of the 8, and I'll give them some more time.

Thanks again everyone!

 

[MikeScott]

Looks OK to me too. I've had something similar before, probably just some junk that's floated up to the surface on CO2. If you give it a light shake, it may start to fall out.

Sure enough, gave the carboy a shake, and it all fell out.

You guys rule! Thanks!

 

[qvantamon]

The myster hop SMASH is terrific, and doesn't have any issues.

Did you/he just forget what strain it is, or is it a true wild hop?

 

[MikeScott]

The myster hop SMASH is terrific, and doesn't have any issues.

Did you/he just forget what strain it is, or is it a true wild hop?

She and her husband divorced, and her husband is the one that planted them. I've been trying to get her to ask him what type of hops they are, with no luck. I didn't find out about them until pretty late this year, so next year I was planning on taking some pictures and hopefully seeing if someone can identify them.

I may have some wild hops too though, behind my work they are supposedly growing all over the place. Yet again, I didn't find out about those until winter, so I have no idea what they are either.