Mold? Doomed? Help?

[andyplank]

I've got this beautiful layer of goodies floating atop a Ginger-Lemongrass Wheat concoction. Looks like mold to me. My next step was going to get this into a keg today so I can serve it five days from now. Now I'm not sure what route to go. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

P.S. This is my secondary. It's been in there for three weeks.

 

[andyplank]

Update: I'm just going to call this a yeasty layer of yummy goodness and roll with it.
I did rack to secondary a little quicker than I normally would like, because I thought I was in a little more of a rush to get this beer out. Did 8 days in primary, 21 days in secondary, now putting into a keg. We'll see how it turns out!

 

[Yooper]

It's definitely infected. It's got a ton of headspace in there, and that is probably why. Instead of a "secondary" where the beer is exposed to all that headspace, just keg it next time.

If it tastes good, drink it but watch out for bottle bombs if you bottle it because most bacterial contaminations will keep fermenting. In the keg, once the beer is gone, make sure to really work hard to clean and sanitize the keg and lines so you don't infect the next batch in the keg.

 

[Dmlsys23]

Seconded. Definitely infected. I had this same thing happen to my Irish Red and I was forced to dump it since it had been intended for my keg. Didn't feel like replacing my beer line and hoping I did a good enough job cleaning the keg.

 

[unionrdr]

The main reason I don't secondary anymore, unless I'm oaking or something. Too much headspace- Co2 + infection.

 

[Edb7]

One remedy is to fill some CO2 into the sanitized secondary vessel, and then transfer. The CO2 is heavier than air, so it stays in the bottle to eliminate an oxygen-rich head space. Hope that helps somebody!

 

[andyplank]

Awesome. Thanks guys!