Infection?!

[jmtonkin]

Ugh! I was so very excited for this beer! It was my favorite tasting up to this point, and now it's definitely gone down hill. I thought I had a stuck fermentation (after one week, it had gone from 1.060 to 1.040, and stayed there for several days). I checked it today, and when I opened the fermenter, I was greeted with this horrendous sight!



Is it a lost cause? I have a feeling that it is, and I'll have to start this over!


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[Yooper]

Yep. It's badly infected. It's a dumper, for sure. Some people would say to hold onto it, if you like sour beers. But I've never heard of an accidental sour beer turning into a good beer.

 

[passedpawn]

Yep. It's badly infected. It's a dumper, for sure. Some people would say to hold onto it, if you like sour beers. But I've never heard of an accidental sour beer turning into a good beer.

^^ What she said, all of it.

 

[unionrdr]

I had a batch of my Maori IPA look like that. Scooped the funk off the top with the dry hop bags & sprayed it with Starsan. Bottled it soon after. 4 weeks later i was pretty good. I think the little bit of funk added to the NZ hops flavors. But that was a lucky break, I think. Taste it & see?...

 

[passedpawn]

You should taste it anyway. If, by some miracle, it's completely fermented and there's no off flavor, you could keg it. If kept cold, it wouldn't continue to ferment. There's no path to bottling that doesn't result in a beer that has off flavors.

 

[jmtonkin]

It didn't fully ferment; it stopped way short.

What would cause this bad of an infection?


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[hou_me]

Bummer. Any idea how it happened?

-ben

 

[unionrdr]

Well, actually... mine was mostly quite good, but that little bit of some kind of citrus fruitiness mixed with the hop flavors. NZ hops are mostly tropical fruit flavors, one with oaked berries though. So it seemed to blend in. But I guess it is true that some flavor from it can't be avoided completely.

 

[jmtonkin]

I have no idea. I thought I was being pretty careful with my sanitation. The only thing I can thing of is that my dry hopping container didn't get sanitized properly. However, my fermentation stopped way before that, so maybe it was doomed from the start.


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[unionrdr]

I thought about the dry hop bag not getting sufficiently sanitized, or maybe a spigot didn't get cleaned? I tossed the bucket after that. It was a BB Ale Pail with no lid seal anyway. I got the Midwest 7.9G shorty with lid seal after that.

 

[Yooper]

Bummer. Any idea how it happened?

-ben

It has a huge headspace, and oxygen loving bacteria would take hold very easily once no new c02 is being produced to help protect the top of the beer. Opening it several times would also allow tons of oxygen in so that the beer's surface would be susceptible to whatever contaminates (mold, bacteria, wild yeast) are around.

 

[unionrdr]

I completely agree with that one. Saw it a few times myself.