Starter wort began to sour

[BullGator]

Everything comes down to time right? So I brewed last Sunday and took some runnings off my spent grain to make some starter wort. I make my starter wort ahead of time and pressure cook the jars so I have cooled, sterile wort on hand for starters. Well after a long brew day, I waited until Monday night to put the wort in the jars (after heating the wort back up to around 200deg). Then the work week hit and the jars sat all week before I could actually run the pressure cooker. So now the have some white fuzz on top of the wort. I know the pressure cooking process will kill everything, but I wonder if this stuff is worth keeping or not. I guess I can always pop one open after, smell/taste and measure gravity. Who knows what bug started growing but at least they will be sterile. What do you think?

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[flars]

Looks like bacteria from the grains got a good start. Boiling the saved runnings immediately, and then pouring into sanitized jars, may have prevented the bacterial growth.

Pressure canning may not kill everything that is growing in your jars. I wouldn't risk using this wort for a starter. To much time involved in brewing a beer to lose it to an infection. Time to bring out the DME.

 

[Brauer]

Use the infected jars to make a sour. Dump them in a carboy, throw in some sour bottle dregs, and forget about it in a closet for a few months.

 

[BullGator]

Looks like bacteria from the grains got a good start. Boiling the saved runnings immediately, and then pouring into sanitized jars, may have prevented the bacterial growth.

Pressure canning may not kill everything that is growing in your jars. I wouldn't risk using this wort for a starter. To much time involved in brewing a beer to lose it to an infection. Time to bring out the DME.

You're probably right. Might be better to cut my losses now rather than invest more time. Pressure cooking all these jars will take a good bit of time.

It might be fine but I guess I would be introducing one more level of uncertainty and if anything would ever to go wrong with using this stuff, I never could quite rule this issue out (regardless of the actual cause of my hypothetical future problem).

Thanks for the input.

 

[BullGator]

Use the infected jars to make a sour. Dump them in a carboy, throw in some sour bottle dregs, and forget about it in a closet for a few months.

Good suggestion. My problem is I'm not sure what exactly got in there. Maybe if I use some aggressive dregs (like jolly pumpkin) it won't matter right? I am assuming I should go ahead and pressure cook all the infected wort before doing that huh?

 

[ArcLight]

While pressure canning wont remove the acidity, wouldn't it kill any pathogens? Thats why it's done, to kill Botulism spors. And the heat should have denatured any organic toxins, shouldn't it?
I would think the starter is safe, and the volume is so small that the acidity will be diluted 20 or 40 to 1.

I personally wouldn't use it, but I think it would be fine to use.

 

[BullGator]

Ya, I think you're right. I decided to go ahead and pressure cook it all and use it to make a simple sour. By simple I mean I'm just going to dump some dregs of something in a carboy and see what happens. It's around 5 gallons of starter wort so it's a lot to just throw out.