Strange Film/Bubbles in secondary

[grace]

Another Is my beer ruined thread.

This was in a bucket primary for 2 weeks and has been in the secondary for a week. A couple of days ago I notices a film forming on top. now it has giant bubbles underneath it (see pic). Also the airlock has started bubbling again. Any ideas of what this is and whether my beer is ruined?

When I moved this to the secondary I noticed that the yeast at the bottom didn't smell very good; I'm not sure if that's normal since this is the first time I used liquid yeast (Wyeast 1084 Irish ale.) Perhaps the smell has something to do with the strange film...

 

[Suthrncomfrt1884]

looks like wild yeast to me.

 

[Yooper]

Yuck. That looks like a pellicle. Hard to say what the contamination is, but it's probably either lactobacillus or another unwanted infection.

 

[grace]

So is there any hope for it is it just garbage. I opened it up and smelled it and it still smells like beer, not vinegary at all. Should I rack it out from underneath the pelicle or just wait a while. Since there is airlock activity I don't think putting it in bottles now would be a good idea.

I guess I should just taste it and see how bad it is. But It's pretty scary looking.

 

[double_e5]

Go ahead and taste it. If you can stomach it, let it ride. You may have just created one hell of a sour beer on accident.

 

[android]

nice! i'd definitely taste it and if it's OK, maybe let it ride out a while if you like sourness. definitely nothing that will kill you, just spontaneous fermentation at it's best! it might be interesting to monitor the SG and see how much it's changing... any idea where this infection may have come from, or did you think your sanitation procedure was right on (strictly curious)?

 

[grace]

Well I got up the nerve to taste it, and it doesn't seem too bad. So I guess I'll wait it out and bottle when the airlock stops bubbling and the SG is steady and see how it turns out. Not much to lose at this point. Maybe it will even be good. (fingers crossed)

I thought that I sanitised everything well, but I guess I must have missed something. I think it might be something airborne in my basement which is the only place cool enough in my house to keep it. (it is an old house and though the basement is dry at the moment we have to run a dehumidifier all the time to keep it that way.)

I think in the future I'll take it upstairs before racking, so it is never exposed to the basement air.

So I guess I need to replace my syphon hose after this batch. Is there any other equipment that should be replaced? My primary is a plastic bucket, but I'm pretty sure it was fine in there. The infection either came from my syphon equipment or the air. I just bought an auto-syphon for this batch, so I hope I don't need to replace it already.

 

[Suthrncomfrt1884]

As long as you properly clean and sanitize your equipment, you shouldn't have to toss anything.

 

[double_e5]

I would give everything a bleach halocaust. Bleach the hell out of everything that came in contact with the beer.

 

[futurefjp]

Go ahead and taste it. If you can stomach it, let it ride. You may have just created one hell of a sour beer on accident.

Had the same issue in the Secondary of this sour beer - WLP655 - and I tried it as I thought we had some badness in our Saison Duponte copy ... I'm blown away! The 'homebrew' taste is declining and it's becoming much more interesting on my palate...

 

[unionrdr]

Can't see the pic?...

 

[freisste]

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