There’s a huge difference between a yeast and a bacteria fermentation. What I have going on here is definitely a yeast fermentation. It’s twin sister (another flask I left beside it) did not fair as healthy. It develoed a funky looking, mucusy looking slime and dots of mold on the surface. I haven’t smelled it yet but, yeah, I wouldn’t drink that. I will smell it for grins once it comes along a little further. The other wort took off like a normal fermentation and smells very clean, if not a little bretty.
Be very careful NOT to ever go to belgium if you are afraid of critters in your beer. Like I said in earlier posts, there are some breweries who still perform some spontaneous fermentations. Even Russian River has experimented with some and blended them into the beers they serve to the public.
I have no problems with critters in beer. I just think that random critters can have potential dangers. My reading about lambics has more than once mentioned the so-called “enteric” phase of fermentation has potential hazards associated with it, does not produce desirable flavors or characteristics, and that the commerical producers try to avoid these forms of microbes (despite the “spontaneous” nature of lambic fermenation. It is for this reason that the commerical yeast banks do not include the “enteric” bacteria in their blends, and authors like Sparrow advise us to avoid these. I agree that a finished lambic will not harbor living enteric bacteria, even if they were present in early fermentation, but lacking the capability to figure out whether the beer has anything harmful in it, I choose to avoid random bugs.
Well, now we are just arguing. ;) I’ll say it one more time, people have been drinking spontaneous fermented beverages for thousands of years. Beers have been picking up infections for thousands of years. Homebrewers have been picking up infections in beer every since people have brewed in home. If it were so easy for pathogens to take up residency in beer people would be dropping like flies. Microbrews all across the country served obviously infected beers all across the states in the late 80s all the way through the 90s. There are breweries and homebrewers experimenting with spontaneous fermentation all over the country, most notably Russian River. It’s a lot safer that you make it out to be.
I’m going to let this thing go to completion and, if it smells good, I may make a beer out of it. If it smells and tastes bad I’m going to dump it. Really, it doesn’t scare me in any way, shape or form. There are way more harmful forms of bacteria lurking in everyday places where you touch or eat than you will ever find in a fully fermented batch of any beer anywhere.
True enough, however I would suggest that there is a difference between something that is potentially lethal and something that tastes foul and gives you a case of the runs (and yes, that could be lethal to someone with a weakened ammune system argument, but then they shouldn’t be drinking from flasks left out on Major’s back porch for a week or two ;D ).
I’d like to think our ancestors had enough wits to dump something that looked slimy and smelled nasty.