Is this my first infection? (pic)

[Chriso]

Exactly what the title says.... I went to bottle my Raspberry RIS, and cracked the lid to find a unusual surprise. It doesn't smell like anything but alcohol - very "hot" alcohol.... What do ya think? Rack from under and bottle it anyways? Let time tell?

It was the 080808 RIS, 1.088 og, and then hit with two jars of Smuckers 100% Fruit Raspberry spread - ingredients are only raspberries, water, and fruit pectin. (Chill haze irrelevant in beer this dark) Boiled both jars before cooling and adding to the end of primary, let sit one week, then racked to secondary for clearing. Did not have this "funk" at racking.

 

[McKBrew]

Reminds me of landhoney's pellicle in this thread. It's a sign of a brett infection. Might be what you have, although I'm sure you didn't plan it.

You might have the only 8-8-8 sour RIS, which could be a good thing, who knows?

 

[Chriso]

I wonder what a properly aged Raspberry Russian Imperial Sour Stout tastes like? Huh. Makes me want to bottle it anyways. Thoughts? I'm gonna go try a sample.

Edit: Well, it tastes like strongly alcoholic, roasty / charcoal-y, sour, raspberry liquid. Not bad, per se. But very strong. Robitussin strong.

It's only 2.5 gal, so aging (1+ year) is not out of the question, and at least 1/2 of my batch was good (so far). I would even consider buying a 3gal glass carboy for such a thing, so I can bleach or pitch this fermenter out.

So do I evict this tenant, or make a new room for him?

 

[McKBrew]

I say save it and see what happens.

 

[landhoney]

Are those bubbles on the pellicle? If so, I'd say it may be a good sign???? Maybe???
I think Brett is the only 'infection' that makes bubbles like that, all the 'good/intentional' Brett pellicles have bubbles. Most pictures of people's infections do not have bubbles in the pellicle.
If it is Brett it might not be that bad. My friends Courage RIS clone used Brett because the real thing had Brett in it. And it is one of the best, longest lived, beers of all time.
With Brett it will be dryer than the normal beer, maybe drier than to style, but it may be very good....and just a bit funky, not sour.
As always, drink it and find out before dumping
edit> If it tastes OK now, I'd wait and see how it turns out. The danger with bottling now if the gravity is high, is that the Brett may/will continue to work the gravity down in the bottle and may cause overcarbonation or worse.....bombs.

 

[TexLaw]

If I had room for it, I'd hand onto it and see what happens. It might taste like cough syrup now, but it could be something special in several months or so. Landhoney's assessment sounds pretty encouraging.


TL

 

[Chriso]

Yay! Landhoney showed up, I knew one of our PhD's Of Sour would stop by!

Those indeed are bubbles, and I thought, as I was looking in there and snapping the pic, one of them even actively bubbled at me.

I'm saving this one for sure. Clues on what a "good" aging life might be - a good wait-till-bottling time and bottle conditioning time? (Brewed 12/27, Cal Ale V yeast, FG 1.020, racked 1/2 of it on 1/15?? and then added the raspberry same day. Undisturbed till now.)

With the healthy bubbles in there, though, I'm now afraid to move it to a carboy. Think 3 months in a plastic secondary will be ok?

 

[Chriso]

Got another question, it was 1.088 -> 1.020, how far further do you think Brett will ferment out? When's a good time to pull a sample to hydro? (I have to be sparing, as I only have 2.5 gal, so a hydro sample is comparatively a very large sample size!)

 

[landhoney]

I think it very well could get into the low teens, or lower possibly. I personally wouldn't leave it for 3+ months in a plastic bucket, but lots of people do and seem to have success. I don't like that the oxygen exposure is so high in a bucket over the long haul. I think you'd be OK racking and breaking the pellicle this early, should reform fairly quickly. I'd wait a month before taking another hydro sample.
My .02.

 

[shunoshi]

This looks like it could turn out pretty interesting. Hopefully I'll get picked to receive your beers for the swap, chriso. I'd be interested in trying one of these out.

 

[Chriso]

For anyone still hanging around out there...... this beer is still in secondary fermenter. Its pellicle looked like this:

Then I crushed (1) Campden tablet and sprinkled it in. It landed on the pellicle so I gently swirled the entire fermenter long enough to hopefully combine pellicle, chemical, and beer. It dissipated, and then reappeared after 3-4 seconds -- VERY rapidly. Then I sprayed the lid with sanitizer and popped it back on. Now it looks like this:

So my question is..... do I rack it now? Or do I wait a day or so, so that the Campden can stabilize and sterilize, and THEN rack into a corny to force carb?

 

[landhoney]

You could rack it from underneath, but the Brett/etc/whatever is still in the beer if the pellicle popped back up like that. If you have the means to cool it down below 50F, preferably 40F I think, the Brett/etc. should slow down and fall to the bottom, then use a fining agent, then Campden tablet, and then rack it. Other than heat or sterile filter this is the only method I've seen that has seemed to stop Brett before its finished up its beer meal.

Good luck, let us know what you do, the taste, the gravity, etc. please.

 

[Chriso]

Update: I've moved the beer from here to there to everywhere. It's been in every room of the house. I keep feeling inspired to go "deal with it" then avoiding it.

I finally cracked the lid to peek, and it's looking quite interesting!

Apologize for the terrible quality of the pic. I'm gonna take one with my real camera tonite.

 

[Chriso]

Crossposted from this thread :
Does This Look Infected? (Pics Included - Beer related...or IS IT??) - Home Brew Forums

Ok, here it is. TASTING NOTES:

Aroma: Three things simultaneously: Roast/coffee/chocolate, Raspberry, and very strong Sour smell. Not like spoiled, but.. hard to describe. Exactly like the pellicle smells. Very ... Perfumey. I don't have the right word for it.

Appearance: Brownish black. That's about all.

Flavor: .... Still motivating myself to take the sip. *hesitant pause* Hm. Actually, not terribly pleasant. Part of it tastes very dry and hot - alcoholic heat-wise - while part of it tastes just like it smells. If you search, you can find roasty bits to it ... but mostly, it just tastes oxidized and boozey and perfumey-sour. Interesting.

Mouthfeel: Dry. Very, very dry. A bit like drinking peroxide. And the alcoholic heat sticks with you like cheap whiskey usually burns.

I don't know, guys. I'm tempted to ditch it. I don't know if I even want to tie up a keg with it -- after all, I'll be kegging my Barleywine any day now.

I'll keep thinking about it. But based on my tasting... um... This isn't terribly pleasant. I don't know if anyone would actually *want* to drink this, myself included.

My first dumper?


Thoughts? Feedback?

 

[EvilTOJ]

It's entirely up to you, but if it were me and it doesn't taste good after 9 months, I'd dump it and burn the bucket. Life's too short for bad beer.

 

[Chriso]

I think I'll be dumping it. I might bottle up two 22oz bottles, per Revvy's idea, just .... to see what they're like in another year (hopefully with a little bit of carb).

So, I'm debating: Do I oxyclean and keep the bucket lid, or dump it too? Same with the three-piece airlock.... Am I being a cheap bastard? Should I just part ways with it, on the grounds that a $1.50 airlock isn't worth ruining a batch of beer?

Or am I being overly paranoid, and should I keep both the lid and the airlock, and just part ways with the bucket + spigot?

I'm leaning towards the safer policy of "junk 'em all" ... or even better, junk the spigot, lid, airlock, and re-use the bucket to hold my sidewalk salt for this winter.

 

[rcrabb22]

I'm no expert but if you have doubts, then dump the equipment. I realize I'm spending your money but I'll bet you will always have the feeling your next batch using that equipment will be infected as well. Not worth the anxiety to me.

 

[EdWort]

I'd junks it all. Salt bucket is not a bad idea, but you might end up spreading infected salt on your sidewalk, then folks walking on it will bring it back in the house and your whole house will have a giant pellicle over it.

Toss everything.

 

[mmb]

Brett scares me, so I vote a Scorched Earth policy. Anything that came in contact with the infection gets a slash 'n burn.

 

[Bob869007]

Reminds me of landhoney's pellicle in this thread. It's a sign of a brett infection. Might be what you have, although I'm sure you didn't plan it.

You might have the only 8-8-8 sour RIS, which could be a good thing, who knows?

What is Brett?