I started a melomel batch two weeks ago. Below are a list of batch details: 5 gallon batch frozen blueberries (roughly 4-5lbs per gallon) 18.5 lbs of honey (raw, unpasteurized honey from my fathers farm) 10 grams of Red Star Cote De Blanc yeast pitched with 12.5 grams of Go-ferm Staggered yeast nutrient addition (fermaid O) 0 hours : 10.9 grams 24 hours : 10.9 grams 48 hours : 10.9 grams 1/3 sugar break (roughly 96 hours) : 10.9 grams …
Been brewing for some years now and never had a batch go bad. But after I bottled my last brew there was a black layer on the side of the brew bucket(see picture). This layer was below the surface line of the brew when it was fermenting. It seems like there is some at the bottom of the brew bucket to. We didn't see anything while bottling, only an hour after when we had time to clean did we notice …
I've just gone to rack & bottle a witbier that has been in primary for about 5 weeks and noticed this white gunk floating on top of the beer. It doesn't look too healthy, what is it? Is it safe? I'm hoping it's just some undisolved dry wheat extract or dry krausen. EDIT: After bottling / kegging the brew tasted & smelt fine - great in fact.
My batch of wine has been stabilized, degassed, and clarified. It is in the last stage before bottling and a film has appeared on the top at the edge on the glass. Also, there are a few bubbles on the surface of the wine. It smells fine and the filmy deposit looks like a yeast overgrowth rather than bacteria. Is my wine ruined or should I bottle as usual?
This is my first time posting to this forum, so if I make some edict mistakes I apologize in advance. I have brewed this recipe, https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/beer-recipe-of-the-week-crabapple-lambicky-ale/, for the second time and this time there are white splotches coming up on top. I am fairly certain this is contamination but I am not sure what I should do. My instinct is to bottle it now and see what it tastes like when it is carbonated. This is only my second contamination …
15 days ago I started a batch of wine from a Wine Kit. I went to measure the SG to begin the next step when I found the wine had a film layer at the top. Anyway I phoned the place that sold it to me and am getting a new wine kit tomorrow. Before I pour this contaminated wine down the toilet, I am wondering if I could finish the process and distill it? Can I do anything to …
What is the best way to sterilize things like dry hops, spices or fruit before putting them in the fermenter? Some stuff you can obviously boil. But boiling hops, say, would defeat the purpose of dry-hopping it seems. Yet adding straight dry hops to the fermenter seems like a good way to get contamination.
I brewed a double batch of IPA with a buddy about 8 weeks ago. We split this into two 5 gallon pails and 2 weeks later into two carboys. His was fine, but mine developed a bit of white stuff on the top of the beer. It smelt fine and tasted OK so I bottled it after 2 more weeks. After being in the bottles about 10 days I decided to try some. I noticed that all the bottles had …
This seems to be very similar to this question about hop seeds but I have not used fresh hops, I used pellet centennial hops purchased vacuum packed and frozen from homebrew shop. Ingredients (1 gallon batch): Liquid Amber extract - 1.2 pounds Centennial hops - .5 ounces Dry Yeast - as per package instructions. cant find the package now, a little embarrassing. Process: 80 minute boil. Stirred in extract during water warming up. 0.3 ounces of hops added 20 minutes …
Hi! Okay, so around month ago I made a saison with some mixed frozen strawberries (1 week in the freezer) added to the primary fermentation (fermented with S.Cerevisiae strain). After three weeks I've transferred the beer for the secondary fermentation. After a week the beer got covered by white coating with weird white "dots" arriving in groups of few (as seen on 1st picture). I'd say it looks a bit like Pediococcus, but I have not seen those dots in …
A berliner weisse we forgot to bottle for around a month and a half. Did not introduce pediococcus or lactic acid in the fermentation. Did a sour mash before the boil so lactobacillus shouldn't have been present.
This is my first all-grain batch and unfortunately it has developed some kind of growth. It didn't smell like death, actually smelled pretty good, and the samples I have been taking have all tasted good, so I went ahead and bottled it. Just curious what it could be and if I will be looking at a loss with this one.
When I was about to leave this morning, I noticed that one of my carboys has this white mold growing on the surface. In 8 years of homebrewing, this is the first time it happens. This is a braggot I've been aging for 6 months and I had recently racked it off to remove some sediment. I guess something got inside during that process. I was thinking of racking it tonight and discard the head and hopefully, that could help …
Is there an easy way to detect whether excessive foaming / gushing is the result of over carbonation or a gusher contamination? Perhaps a telltale taste or other indicator?
I brewed a 5-gallon batch of Frankenberry Chocolate Raspberry Stout July 20 (11 days ago) using a Scottish Ale Wyeast. The yeast was pitched at 78 degrees, everything was sanitary, I immediately placed the airlock on the plastic fermenter where it is now. EXCEPT my husband didn't seal the lid on the primary, just had it sitting on there, closed, but not sealed. No activity in the airlock, small, white filmy bubbles. Should I take a gravity reading? It smells …
Situation Never mind the two hop bags that didn't sink, those things are more buoyant than what I gave them credit for. This is the beer in a secondary vessel. I wanted to get it off the yeast cake so I could wash the yeast (after realizing it was 9% ABV, I didn't bother, a bit much for the yeast, I fear). It's been in this bucket for one week today. It doesn't resemble a pellicle that you'd get from …
My two last batches got a sour/white wine taste to them (prior to bottling). The first one was a Hefeweizen fermented in my bucket. The taste was present from day 4 up to bottling a month later. In my memory, there was no film on the beer in the fermenter. The second one was a Brett Saison (WL Farmhouse Blend) fermented in my glass carboy. I tasted it yesterday after 3 weeks of fermentation and it had the same taste. …
Beer Kit: Brewferm Tarwebier This was my first time using StarSan as it's hard to get in my neck of woods. Is this some ugly Krausen or contamination, if so what type? Is there any recovery from this, can I rack from underneath it, spray it with some StarSan? I stored the StarSan for a few days after cleaning bottles, before I reused it to clean my FV, I that that was okay to do? could this be the source …
I brewed a sweet mead on February 24th, 2013, racked it to secondary on April 4th, 2013, and was getting ready to bottle it now (end of July). I had been out of town for a few weeks and when I came back the top of the brew looked like this: Is that likely to be contamination, or just something normal for a mead? It smells like mead, and a quick taste doesn't alert me to anything odd... but it …
Everyone learns during their first brewing experience that you have to carefully sanitize anything that touches your wort after the boil to avoid infection. What happens when wort gets contaminated? How do you identify a contamination, and what can be done about it? Can you discover it before you bottle? Does contamination mean losing the batch, or can you recover from it? If you can recover, how is the flavour of the beer affected? Is contamination a strong possibility if …