Mead infection?

[Brewenstein]

A few days ago I was checking on two meads / melomels that I have going - a raspberry and pineapple. I noticed a film starting on both, but worse on the raspberry. I was under the impression that meads and wines were almost immune from infection, but perhaps that is incorrect.

Some back story. These are my second meads having made an AOM a couple years back. For these I started with a 4 gallon batch on 11/6/16 consisting of the following:

8 pounds 9 ounces of honey
3 gallons spring water
1/2 tsp each of yeast nutrient and energizer
1 cup Lipton tea
Juice from 3 limes, lemons and oranges
Zest from two of the lemons
Lavin 71B-1122 yeast

This made 4 gallons of must at 1.086 OG. I followed the nutrient and energizer schedule I found on these forums (adding at each third drop of SG) until an SG of 1.026. Then I split the batch and racked onto 2 pounds thawed pineapple chunks for one and 4 - 12 ounce packages of thawed red raspberries (both fruits from Trader Joe's) - this was on 11/13/16. Let these continue to ferment until SG hit 1.000 for both then racked off the fruit and lees on 11/19/16. All fermentation temps were 70 - 72. On 12/11/16 racked both off lees and added 2 campden tablets per fermenter for stabilization.

The film was noticed within the last two weeks (don't check it often), but since then it has grown mostly on the raspberry one. I decided to rack again today, and did so with another addition of campden - 2 tablets per fermenter.

There was some head space on each fermenter for the past two months, and the fermenters are food safe plastic containers (originally pretzel containers from Sam's Club). Perhaps the head space is part of the problem even though I used campden tablets? Maybe the plastic doesn't keep all O2 out?

I racked the raspberry to a smaller container, and topped off the pineapple one with a bottle of AOM so that there is very little head space on both of them now. My plan is to observe them over the next month, and if no issues, I will bottle.

Thanks for reading and your thoughts.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1486927752.338590.jpg
Pic of film.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1486927779.144310.jpg
Closer view.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1486927805.560048.jpg
Residue after racking.

 

[Brewenstein]

I forgot to mention that I tasted each before I racked and there are no off flavors.

 

[thm57]

Does look like it could be an infection. Definitely try to keep it away from air at this point.

I have zero experience dealing with infections but if fermentation is complete you could try k-meta. hopefully someone with more experience can help with this.

 

[bernardsmith]

Not had any experience with infections but K-meta should help. That said, I suspect the fact that there is such a large surface area exposed to air is the problem. That's the reason why most seasoned wine makers use carboys as their secondary. Filled to the neck there is perhaps no more than a square inch or so of surface area and perhaps 2 cubic inches of air in total. Wide mouths are great as primaries, but I would not touch them as secondaries. Moreover, just because some plastic is considered "food grade" does not mean that it is suitable for storing alcohol. They can leach chemicals in the presence of alcohol or low pH liquids like wines. And indeed they may also be relatively porous when it comes to air and oxygen. The spaces between the molecules that make up many plastics are larger than the molecules of O2

 

[Brewenstein]

I did use the correct dosage of k-meta (campden tablets), so hopefully that will work. As I said, I'll give it some time to see what happens and bottle if all looks good.

Never thought about the alcohol leaching anything out of the plastic, but hopefully no issues with that 🤢.

 

[roachvaliek]

How are you keeping the pretzel containers airtight? I only ask because, after opening, they aren't ment to be. That's why your pretzels get stale.

 

[Brewenstein]

How are you keeping the pretzel containers airtight? I only ask because, after opening, they aren't ment to be. That's why your pretzels get stale.

Good point. I'm guessing that they are not as air tight as I had thought. I use them sometimes for fermenting beer if I end up with a little too much wort, but the beer is only in there for 3-4 weeks tops, not months.

For now, I'm going to let them ride for a couple weeks and keep an eye on them. And then hopefully bottle.