Is the beer wort infected?

[FloydIPA]

Hello!
Please check my beer, is this a normal beer head during fermentation or is it contaminated? Fermentation 7 days by Mangrove Jack's "US West Coast M44" yeast. Brown-colored foam and bubbles look like some kind of pellicle

 

[IslandLizard]

Welcome to our homebrew forums!

Some fermentations can look very gnarly.
Do you have any reason to believe it got infected somehow?

There's not much you can change about it anyway, just let it ride.

Some hints for your next fermentation:

• Leave a larger headspace in the fermenter. A headspace of around 1/5-1/4 of your batch volume is recommended. Such as 5-5.5 gallons of beer in a 6.5 gallon bucket.
• Control your fermentation temperatures (toward the lower end of your yeast's temp range) so it doesn't go bonkers. Also gives better tasting beer.
• Don't remove the lid of fermenters just to peek inside. That can introduce infections, "things" dropping in. If you need to check, just look through the airlock hole, shining a flashlight through the side.
• Basically, only remove the lid when the beer is ready to rack to your bottling bucket or keg. Before doing so, first thoroughly sanitize the whole area around the rim of the lid and bucket.

 

[hotbeer]

Realize that few infections are toxic. Many might turn out to be dumper's. But that is because they taste terrible. You are unlikely to know for sure till it finished.

I can't decide from your photo what my current opinion is as to yay or nay.

You can try to decide at bottling/kegging time, but I've had a few that were somewhat distasteful at that time and were enjoyable when carbonated well and conditioned.

 

[mac_1103]

Looks pretty kreusen-ish to me.

 

[kev211]

Looks pretty kreusen-ish to me.

Ditto.

Also ditto to what others are saying about infection, but this just looks like krausen to me. Only way to tell is to let that sucker ride out. 7 days is way too early to tell

 

[FloydIPA]

Thanks for the replies. The reason I needed to open the fermenter was to dry hop . The first time I didn't do this, but today I opened it again and it looked prety normal, the foam went down. The smell of yeast is pleasant, I added hops and closed it. I think hope the beer is fine. Also i got pic from enother forum sended to me as a replay, it looks very similar as mine and they sad there wos fine beer. So i wiil keep updateed

 

[Miraculix]

Thanks for the replies. The reason I needed to open the fermenter was to dry hop . The first time I didn't do this, but today I opened it again and it looked prety normal, the foam went down. The smell of yeast is pleasant, I added hops and closed it. I think hope the beer is fine. Also i got pic from enother forum sended to me as a replay, it looks very similar as mine and they sad there wos fine beer. So i wiil keep updateed

You can add a little bit of sugar, about 50g or so, together with the dry hops. This will enable the yeast to scavenge the introduced oxygen.

 

[Saunassa]

It looks like you brewed a darker beer. I have found the krausen for some yeast on darker brews are more dense and take longer to drop. More then likely another day and you would have have had most of it fall.

 

[IslandLizard]

The reason I needed to open the fermenter was to dry hop .

As an alternative, you can drop (unbagged) dry hops through the airlock hole in the lid.

I've drilled a 1" access "port" (hole) in some lids to make that easier. I can also stir the beer if need be, using the back end of a long brew spoon. When using the 1" port, I stream CO2 in through the airlock port to reduce air (oxygen) ingress.

 

[hotbeer]

Quit opening the lid.

 

[Kickass]

Looks like normal fermentation krausen, to me.