I racked this off the yeast about a month ago and opened it up this morning to stabilize it. It seems I may have the beginning of a cider sour. Seems to taste OK (on top of the morning coffee anyway), and I might actually go as far as saying it’s quite good. Sure looks like one of those pellicle pictures to me. I’ve not seen everything, but I’ve yet to see yeast do this.
What’s the best way to proceed here?
That is indeed a pellicle. Go ahead and stabliize it with sorbate and sulfite, that should kill the pellicle. My bet is that it turns out good. Possibly more dry or slightly funky but that looks like a pretty minor pellicle and it’s only been there a very short time.
Thank you for the insight! I’ve added the p. meta. today, and usually wait 24 hours to add the p sorbate so will do that tomorrow. I’ll give it another taste in a couple days.
Definitely a sign of unwelcome visitors. You can’t look at a pellicle and know whether that is lactic acid bacteria, wild yeast, or both. Also know way to know what flavor impact the visitors may impart or how quickly. If you’re stabilizing, it won’t really matter.
Thanks for having a look. Added the P sorb this morning and taste test seems fine which seems weird. I’ll backsweeten it in a week and give it another check.
Tried a taste of it again Friday morning - 2oz maybe - and my guts were in disagreement with this decision most of the weekend. Anyone ever get more than heartburn/flatulence from a funky homebrew? There was a spinach salad and steak involved Friday which are likely culprits too, but still notable.
I’ve never gotten ill from funky homebrew, and I’m not inclined to think that it was the cause of your illness. But piece of mind is way more important than a batch of cider. If you are even remotely concerned, just dump it and clean everything really well. You’ll never be able to enjoy it if you have nagging doubts about the batch, regardless of whether it was actually gone funky or not.
Nah, I’m going to wait for things to clear up and sample it again. I’ve heard of way more cases of gut issues from spinach than homebrew. Besides, if there’s something that funky in the cider, I want to know what it is.
i know this is not what people want to hear, but one reason i dont bother with cider anymore is that I made a very small 1 gallon batch of cider from store-bought unpasteurized, as in keep-in-the-fridge and local apple cloudy apple juice. i drank it one night along with a large amount of other alcohol but the day after was either one of my top 3 hangovers ever and/or bodily got sick from it as well. obviously you’d be inclined to think “you just drank a lot” or i ate something bad, but i had the definite perception that it was more of a “i consumed something wrong and im sick” along with a hangover than anything.
people online often recommend trying cider or mead to complete newbies before homebrewing beer, but i always try to tell people homebrewing beer is actually a lot more surefire you will end up with a drinkable product.
That sucks. I guess in my case, I can’t point at any one thing as a cause. There were just too many variables in between thursday morning and friday evening. fresh fruit, raw greens, handling/cooking raw meat. Could have easily been any one of those. I have a microscope laying around here somewhere I used for looking at yeast. Not sure I’d be able to see bacteria with it, but I want to put some of that cider under a slide and see what I can see.
I have been making cider from apples I grow, pick, press and ferment myself. Never have I or anyone else been sick from drinking it. You guys are grasping at straws.
Spinach is way more likely to cause issues than cider, even funky cider. Blame the spinach.
Always blame the spinach! ;D
while not discounting that you may/likely/have never made a bad cider, imho it is possible to make a cider that has unwanted bacteria overgrowth in it that continues in or creates toxins that end up in the finished product after fermentation (eventually) takes place. What You Need to Know About Juice Safety | FDA . wide variation in pH between apple ciders/storage/handling/packaging dates. i am simply describing my experience with a cider i made under crude conditions once.
the key issue here is that there are variables we cant control in some, not all apple juice before we receive it and generally the advice is not to boil it, and that may even be too late if it was unpasteurized and handled/stored poorly at some point in the supply chain.
im no expert, but my key thing i was trying to say was that, for newbies homebrewing extract beer will result in a better product faster than cider or mead.
Good to know! Assuming you’ve had some questionable batches. Ever find out what went sideways and how’d they turn out?
Ya know, I don’t ever recall a bad batch. Some tasted better than others, but that’s due to season variations in my apples.
You’re referring to raw juice, not fermented juice. I doubt conditions could get much cruder than how I make cider. Pick & press the apples outdoors with no sanitation whatsoever. No pasteurization. Much faster and easier to make than beer. And bacteria making toxins in apple juice? Can you cite some evidence, please?
im saying that suboptimal brewing actions may occur, such as insufficient yeast, late adding of yeast. yes im talking about the raw juice, im just thinking that the potential does exist in unpasteurized/unboiled must(? - apple juice) under some circumstances, even a few hours up to say a delayed addition or action of the yeast due to poor brewing practices (a newbie or a lazy person or ??) and toxins could be produced by organisms or bacteria in the drink. comparatively in a boiled wort the only danger is from botulism spores.
im not going to go citing this, but i think you should be able to understand that i mean in unusual but possible cases this could happen. personally i believe ive gotten sick, not just due to the alcohol, but from bacteria/toxins/?? in a cloudy rice wine made at a restaurant/brewplace in asia and from a homebrewed cider i made that was really crummy. ie. i didnt follow the pattern and practices i normally do for my main homebrews, this was a very small batch using some old yeast in a small amount i think.
if someone bought some unpasteurized apple juice that happened to be near the end of its shelf life, then it was warmed to say low or mid 60s in preparation for yeast temps, then a slow-to-act yeast, it could be an issue. whereas similar practice with wort would not.
Not out of the realm of possibility and the cause of an estimated (link below) 16,000-48,000 case of illness a year 
I poked around and found a thesis from 2003 on the topic here. It does mention unpastuerized juices being implicated in widespread illness. On page 27, some info about contamination of cider (non-fermented kind) of raw product due to handling, processing and/or insects, animals, birds and rodents. The good news is it must not be all that common or Denny’s reportable number of dumpers would be more than zero
Further down there is mention of methods which can produce a “5-log reduction” in pathogens (100,000 times fewer) which includes carbon dioxide and “high hydrostatic pressure” which I don’t think 30psi in a keg would qualify (350 megapascals is over 50,000 PSI), but Co2 is certainly mentioned. Page 33 lists further ways to reduce contamination. I found it a really interesting read and I think some of you will too.
Things I’ll do differently is make sure to purge O2 from my kegs after opening them (I don’t typically do that with cider) and star-san the lid whenever removing it from the keg. Also, the day I racked the cider was later on in the afternoon after I had been doing some work removing a glass block window in the basement. There was a lot of “matter” stirred up that day and probably still some floating around. Waiting till the next day for things to settle would have been wiser.
Just to follow up, I sampled the cider again yesterday with no ill affects.
