So a few years brewing and I have finally had my first “wth is this” moment. Need some help.
This is a berry beer. Lots of raspberry black berry land some blueberry. It’s about 7% after fruit using real fruit addition math. (Yes the fruit tout it down about 2%. It was 9% when fruit was added.
My beer was sitting about 60°. It didn’t show up then. I put a heater in the room and then this should up.
The one with the film has a half vanilla bean. The one with the weird bubbles has some oak in it.
Those are classic infections by Brett or bacteria or both. Might turn out tasting good, but I have serious doubts. If it tastes good today, recommend kegging/bottling most of it soon and maybe leave a little to mature in the fermenter to see if age is kind to it. If it doesn’t taste good, sorry, you have to dump it.
What Dave says. Beautiful brett pellicle. You have an infection somewhere. It may or may not be from the fruit.
PS I love the comment ‘Do like everyone else, call it “sour” and give it to hipsters.’
Both are indications of infection. The difference between the two in appearance is that the one with bubbles had offgassing or further fermentation after the film formed and bubbles formed underneath.
Fruit is the most probable culprit of infection, especially since it happened in both batches. Vanilla is not known for being too much of a problem. Oak can carry unexpected yeast but in cubes commonly used in brewing the yeast load is usually so low it is not a problem. It’s unlikely the vanilla and oak separately produced infection at the same time. Fruit is far more likely.
If it tastes good now I would drink it now. If you can keg and keep the kegs cold you can extend the present character. If it doesn’t taste good now you can either dump it or hang on to it and see if it improves although it probably will not.
thank you. i figured it would be the berries.
I think that’s a bit more headspace then you would usually want, but for being 10 days since reaching FG, I would think you should rack to a keg/bottle and condition for a couple of months before trying one out. IF you are bottling, only heavy duty good bottles or grolsch.
I hear it’s difficult to rid your equipment of brett IF that’s what it is.
The common practice is to separate that equipment from your usual brew gear and save for future brettanomyces batches. That is if your into it. I personally like brett and sours.
I hope your beer turns out OK. Its a lot of work to be dumpin.
good luck
What they said.
The plastic/rubber should separated, stainless and glass is ok to brew regular beers again in it if you sanitize well. I’d suggest hitting it with iodophor - it’ll kill bacteria AND yeast.
Star-San is great at bacteria, but can have issues with yeasts.
I regularly use the same plastic equipment across clean/sour/brett beers. The key is cleaning plus proper sanitation. After using equipment for brett/sour and before using it on clean beers I soak in hot water with oxyclean, rinse, soak with cold water with 1 tbsp/gal bleach, rinse and soak with campden tablets (1 tablet/5 gal) and then a final rinse.
You might look at that and think that’s more work than buying new equipment but when you’re talking about bottling equipment plus hoses, airlocks and stoppers you’re talking about duplicates of a lot of equipment.
Good deal,
There’s always a way if the will is there.
Question? About how long do you ferment batches with Brett.
I haven’t done it yet, but I will pretty soon.
Thanks
I wouldn’t even start to think about packaging until after three or four months but I don’t think the flavor is well developed until after nine to twelve months.