Help! Funky white film on cider

[tkenney87]

I got a cider press last fall and broke it in with two small batches of cider (one natural, one with a belgian beer yeast) that I promptly forgot about in the corner of my kitchen. I aged them on the lees for about 2 months before noticing a translucent chalky film had started growing on one of them. I racked them off and then the problem just got worse, turning into white film that looks like a kahm yeast I've seen from other fermentation experiments (see attached pics).

I tasted both while racking. The belgian tasted a bit oxidized but not terrible, but the natural one had a pretty gnarly aftertaste. Not acidified, just overly floral and the bad kind of funky.

I've been troubleshooting the issue and would love to hear if anyone has ideas on where I went wrong, if there are any helpful similar threads, and if there's a way to salvage the belgian one. I assume it's some kind of yeast infection or cider sickness from not pasteurizing the juice (I took my chances) or maybe I didn't do a thorough enough job of sanitizing the cider press, which I bought used and is pretty bulky to take apart and move around.

Everything else was thoroughly sanitized, the airlocks were always topped off, temperature was cider-friendly, etc. This is my third time making cider so still very much a rookie. Appreciate the help!

 

[gregbathurst]

That's film yeast, caused by too much airspace. You need to fill right up into the neck, that way you don't have much surface for film yeast to form on, and much less air to feed the infection. It wouldn't take much to top that up, you could just use water. The cider should be ok unless it smells of vinegar.

 

[tkenney87]

Thanks! Super helpful

 

[JPBrewLI]

3rd image top right looks like a pellicle, i'm no expert but i think it's contaminated.