Is that mold on the surface of my wit?
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It's hard to tell, picture isn't sharp/focused enough. But I think it's a pellicle. Similar to the one you had before.
Likely due to an infection (an unwanted microorganism) lingering in the beer.
Mold doesn't grow on beer surfaces like that.
Likely due to an infection (an unwanted microorganism) lingering in the beer.
Mold doesn't grow on beer surfaces like that.
If that's the case, should I dump it all out?
Didn't we talk about this before?
A small infection (wild yeasts, bacteria) may not ruin your beer. You may not be able to taste or smell it at all.
So no, don't dump it yet.
If the beer is done, taste a little. If it's putrid, yup, no question, dump it. If it tastes good, or even slightly sour, it's up to you.
Just be careful bottling infected beer in glass (bottles). The infection may keep fermenting away, which could lead to bottle bombs. Most plastic bottles are safe, they can withstand much pressure, and don't produce sharp shard projectiles.
You may get a loud pop or even a gusher...
Pellicles:
https://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Pellicle
Mold:
https://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Mold
Avoiding these infections all comes down to proper cleaning and sanitation.
Bleach (diluted) is an excellent sanitizer, it kills pretty much anything alive, including germs.
After a bleach treatment, right before use, a good hot rinse (with boiling or near boiling water if the equipment can handle it*) is recommended to remove all traces of chlorine, you don't want those in your beer.
* Note:
Don't use boiling water on plastics!
Fermenters, such as Fermzilla's All Rounders, PET carboys, tools etc., They'll deform or shrink. Tepid water (you can leave your hand in it for >15 seconds) is about all the heat they can bare.
Piggy backing on Lizard's remarks, let's also consider the fact that you're using a Belgian yeast. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking a cheap shot at Belgian beer, but you have a lot more latitude in your flavor profile with Belgian yeasts. They're supposed to be a bit funky, even Wit. I certainly wouldn't dump it.
There's also a chance that those are small rafts of yeast/braun hefe/etc. I don't think that's the case and I believe Lizard is right. Nevertheless, with a vigorously top cropping yeast (most Wit Yeasts fit that bill, but it does depend upon the strain you used) it's not uncommon to see some miscellaneous debris populating the surface shortly after the krausen has fallen. That said, those flecks of material tend to be darker, less populous, and semi-to-mostly submerged. What you've got there doesn't fit into that description. I think Lizard is right.
Don't dump it, see what you've got first. If you're going to bottle it in glass, keep it cold.
If that's a glass fermenter, use bleach! Having moved over to stainless several years ago, I *really* miss the ease and certainty that bleach provided in my glass fermenters. Also, consider alternating Star-San and Iodophor as your primary sanitizers. Frankly, iodophor is the next best thing to bleach, but it has a very, very short shelf life once mixed. These days, I seldom use Star-San unless I need a sanitizer that will keep stable for long-durations.
Next, think of sanitation-dependent items as being wear items in your brewery, in much the same way that oil, brakes, and tires are wear items on your car.
Once in the Fall and then again in the Spring I schedule a "big sanitation weekend" wherein I tear all of my vessels apart, strip down all my valves, hot PBW soak everything overnight, scrub everything, then boil anything that I can boil. Plastic items, including hoses and ball valves are high wear items. They require periodic replacement. I replace all my cold-side hoses on the first of the year. Back when I had plastic valves on the cold side of my rig, particularly on my bottling bucket, I found it helpful to replace that valve on a half-yearly basis, better still on a quarterly basis. It's relatively cheap and it's a huge weakness in a system. Think of it this way, twenty bucks a year spent on plastic bottling bucket spigots is still less than the cost of an extract batch--and many all-grain batches. Plastic bottling wands are another wear item; you can't boil them, so you can't really be certain that they've been properly clean.
I hope this was helpful to you.
There's also a chance that those are small rafts of yeast/braun hefe/etc. I don't think that's the case and I believe Lizard is right. Nevertheless, with a vigorously top cropping yeast (most Wit Yeasts fit that bill, but it does depend upon the strain you used) it's not uncommon to see some miscellaneous debris populating the surface shortly after the krausen has fallen. That said, those flecks of material tend to be darker, less populous, and semi-to-mostly submerged. What you've got there doesn't fit into that description. I think Lizard is right.
Don't dump it, see what you've got first. If you're going to bottle it in glass, keep it cold.
If that's a glass fermenter, use bleach! Having moved over to stainless several years ago, I *really* miss the ease and certainty that bleach provided in my glass fermenters. Also, consider alternating Star-San and Iodophor as your primary sanitizers. Frankly, iodophor is the next best thing to bleach, but it has a very, very short shelf life once mixed. These days, I seldom use Star-San unless I need a sanitizer that will keep stable for long-durations.
Next, think of sanitation-dependent items as being wear items in your brewery, in much the same way that oil, brakes, and tires are wear items on your car.
Once in the Fall and then again in the Spring I schedule a "big sanitation weekend" wherein I tear all of my vessels apart, strip down all my valves, hot PBW soak everything overnight, scrub everything, then boil anything that I can boil. Plastic items, including hoses and ball valves are high wear items. They require periodic replacement. I replace all my cold-side hoses on the first of the year. Back when I had plastic valves on the cold side of my rig, particularly on my bottling bucket, I found it helpful to replace that valve on a half-yearly basis, better still on a quarterly basis. It's relatively cheap and it's a huge weakness in a system. Think of it this way, twenty bucks a year spent on plastic bottling bucket spigots is still less than the cost of an extract batch--and many all-grain batches. Plastic bottling wands are another wear item; you can't boil them, so you can't really be certain that they've been properly clean.
I hope this was helpful to you.
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The OP lives in Iran, it's in his sidebar profile.
He has very few brewing luxuries, nothing like we have available here in the western world.
I doubt he used a Belgian yeast. Yeast is barely available there. He mentioned in other threads that even an 11 gram pouch of US-05 is rare and very expensive.
Same for sanitizers, Starsan is unavailable. Iodine/Povidone, as it's widely used in the food industry, is probably his best chance.
Oh, nuts.
Didn't realize that, my bad.
Didn't realize that, my bad.
Quick and (not so) dirty workarounds for star San anstinents:
1. Oxyclean or similar unscented oxygen based cleaner. Soak your fermenter in it using really hot water. You can use it to clean the bottles too. Rinse well afterwards!
2. Boiling water. Directly before brewing, throw two litres of boiling water into your fermenter (check if it can take the heat before, most HDPE can take it). Also let the boiling water run through taps etc. Make sure to close the fermenter after inserting the boiling water, the steam will sanitise it, don't seal it air tight, otherwise it might crack.
3. Throw your bottles in the dishwasher on highest temperature without any detergent. This sanitises the bottles, they need to be visible clean before going on.
With this routine, star san is kind of obsolete.
1. Oxyclean or similar unscented oxygen based cleaner. Soak your fermenter in it using really hot water. You can use it to clean the bottles too. Rinse well afterwards!
2. Boiling water. Directly before brewing, throw two litres of boiling water into your fermenter (check if it can take the heat before, most HDPE can take it). Also let the boiling water run through taps etc. Make sure to close the fermenter after inserting the boiling water, the steam will sanitise it, don't seal it air tight, otherwise it might crack.
3. Throw your bottles in the dishwasher on highest temperature without any detergent. This sanitises the bottles, they need to be visible clean before going on.
With this routine, star san is kind of obsolete.
*At rated fermenter temperatures : )
IIRC PET fermentors not under pressure are limited to 120F. HDPE can go over boiling.
Ali, is that glass or plastic?
edit: Also I think he said he got T-58 in another thread, or maybe I'm confusing OP with someone else?
IMO wait and see what the beer is like.
Some people who frequently travel abroad buy and sell that stuff on Instagram
I have starsan, made a solution with a pH of 2.8
I wash and rinse my plastic fermenter with hot water many times before I apply star san
Found the culprit here, there was a leak around the lid
I'm so exhausted with this fermenter
I will move to a thick glass carboy because they're way easier to seal.
And yes I used Belgian ale yeast, fermentis t58. Bought a packet for cheap because the owner hadn't managed to sell enough of them. There was a hint of banana, but no clove or spice, it was not flavorful at all which made me it might've been oxidated.
I learned the hard way that oxygen is your worst enemy when brewing
Yes that was me, I'm the t58 member 
I ended up dumping it all out
It had been exposed to oxygen from the get-go
Also, I could smell some fusel alcohol in there, fermentation temperature was at 20-22 the whole time, but I think I might've underpitched
I ended up dumping it all out
It had been exposed to oxygen from the get-go
Also, I could smell some fusel alcohol in there, fermentation temperature was at 20-22 the whole time, but I think I might've underpitched
I'm surprised by the variety of brewing equipment you can buy here in Iran, theyre just not sold in the market, they're sold by people on Instagram, sure they're expensive but here, imported commercial beers are expensive too, and illegal!
Iranian breweries are not breweries in my opinion, they don't ferment the wort, they make a low gravity wort, mix it with hop extract, and force carbonate
Taste good, super malty, but it's still not beer
Iranian breweries are not breweries in my opinion, they don't ferment the wort, they make a low gravity wort, mix it with hop extract, and force carbonate
Taste good, super malty, but it's still not beer
I will use my dishwasher next time for it's conveniece, but I'll use starsan too, just to be sure
Ah, good!
You don't need to make buckets full of the working solution.
1 liter at a time is plenty. You can swirl it or mop it on with a washcloth.
A working solution will keep for at least a week, even several weeks or much longer.
It may lose some of its potency over time, as we've found out recently.
A working solution is 1 fl oz of concentrate per 5 U.S. gallons.
That's 6 ml per gallon.
Or 1.6 ml per liter.
Many brewers use a spray bottle.
I've heard that as long as the ph is below 3 it will work, right?
No thats not always true, there are a lot of threads about it, some even say it only works for an hour after mixing.
We'd need to see conclusive proof of that, it's most definitely not my experience. If a working solution's "halftime" is only one hour, we would be seeing infections all over the place.
In case of doubt, (somewhat) longer soak/exposure times may make up for some lost activity, if there's any.
But first of all, the surfaces need to be clean before they can be sanitized. You can't sanitize dirt.
The one hour thing is an FDA requirement for use in a commercial food preparation setting. Diluted Starsan remains effective for much longer than an hour, but there is debate about just how long and whether pH alone indicates that it can still do its job. Apparently the surfactant is less stable than the acid, so if it doesn't foam the way it did when it was fresh then it's probably lost at least some of its effectiveness.
I've noticed the foam not being quite as thick and covering in a working solution that's a week or a couple weeks old. Stored in a 3.5 gallon covered plastic bucket.
I've never adhered to the 1 minute contact/soak time, 5 minutes is the absolute minimum, usually it's closer to 10 minutes or as long as several hours.
Yeah, I tend to soak things for a lot longer than one minute too (mostly because I usually think I'm going to need something sanitized much sooner than when I actually end up using it 
). I store my leftover starsan in one gallon plastic juice jugs that seal pretty well and the stuff is still pretty foamy after weeks. But I still make up some fresh every brew day and save the leftovers for tasks that I consider less critical. I suppose that one of these brew days I should make a point of comparing foam quality between the fresh and the old.
). I store my leftover starsan in one gallon plastic juice jugs that seal pretty well and the stuff is still pretty foamy after weeks. But I still make up some fresh every brew day and save the leftovers for tasks that I consider less critical. I suppose that one of these brew days I should make a point of comparing foam quality between the fresh and the old.I'm not convinced that is an infection at all. I would not dump. At least wait and see how it tastes/smells.
