Mold? Or something else?

[carloswlkr]

After racking to a secondary fermentor and waiting for my Irish red ale to clarify, I had a nasty looking film resting on top of my beer. After reading all I could find in threads and the two books I have, I took a sample from below the film and it didn't seem to have any off flavors, so I bottled last night. But I'm curious if anyone can identify from these two pictures whether I had a mold growing, or some other substance.

A bit of background: this is an extract batch, 5lbs light DME, 1lb caramel, 1lb honey, boil time 60 min, 2oz hops in boil at different times, cooled with immersion chiller, safale 05 yeast pitched at 75degrees, primary in a 5gallon glass carboy with blowoff tube. After strong primary fermentation slowed, I racked to a secondary carboy thinking I'd be leaving it to finish fermenting and clarify for at least 4 weeks. After third week, I decided to add an ounce of Saaz for dry hopping. I boiled the mesh hop bag, and added to the carboy. But I neglected to include anything to weigh the bag down, so the hops floated on the surface. Dry hopped for 9 days, then racked to a clean carboy to let the beer clarify some more. After another 5 days, the nasty film appeared.

Any diagnosis?

Thanks!

A

 

[pelipen]

When you say clean carboy, do you mean just clean, or also sanitized. If sanitized, describe your procedure and product.

You almost certainly picked up an infection in one or both transfers. taste it, maybe it'll be ok as a sour. I'm guessing that's lacto, but I'm no expert in infections.

 

[carloswlkr]

Thanks, Pelipen. I've always used bleach to sanitize. The carboy was washed after the last use, filled with cold water, and added about 3 capfulls of bleach. My auto-siphon and hoses sit in a spare cooler I have with a bleach-water solution. I rinsed both off before racking, and have a bottle washer that I used to rinse the carboy (with scalding hot water).

Taste seemed fine to me, otherwise I would have just thrown the whole batch out.

Another interesting note I forgot in my first post... by the time I added the dry-hops, my specific gravity readings were down to about 1.007, and the airlock activity was minimal (yet still slightly active). When I added the dry hops, the activity seemed to increase, and there were a lot more visible bubbles in the wort itself, especially around the floating bag of hops. I used pellets, not whole hops.

Thanks again.

 

[pelipen]

Couple of things jump out. Bleach is a good sanitizer, but also easy to pick up off flavors from chlorine. Rinsing a sanitized object is a no no. Even with hot water, it's generally not something you want to do. Rinsing combined with two transfers almost certainly caused it.

I'd suggest picking up some starsan. It's super easy to use, lasts forever, and is no-rinse.

Degasing from adding hops is normal. Tons of nucleation sites cause CO2 to come out of solution.

Personally, I would avoid the second transfer for certain, and probably the first as well.