Mould on top of brew

[erv77]

Hi All,

New to this! I'm on my second batch of elderflower champagne - the first lot seems fine, is currently bottled and will be ready in 4 days.

The second lot is currently fermenting. After the first two days, there was no sign of fermentation, so I added a little yeast. 2 days later and it looks darker than the first lot, and a few bits of mould are appearing, floating on top. Have I slipped up on my sterilisation somewhere, and does the appearance of mould mean that I have to chuck this lot our and start again?!

Thanks for any help and advice,

erv77

[J_P]

Any chance of a picture Erv? What colour is the "mold" it could be fermentation starting off, a picture would help identifying if you've a problem or not.

[erv77]

I've taken some photos - how do I 'smeging' get them onto a post?! Apologies for my ignorance!

[J_P]

There is a useful how to here

[erv77]

Thanks for that J_P,

Here are the pictures - not looking so good!

[J_P]

That's mold alright

I'd not chance drinking it

[erv77]

Cheers J_P,

It's got considerably worse since the pictures were taken, and has now been used as a natural fertiliser for the hedge! It's a pity, as I hadn't sterilised the bucket for the first lot and that lot was fine, back to the drawing board!

[J_P]

Could it have been that there were contaminants from the elderflowers? Did you steep them in boiling water?

[erv77]

For the first batch I had washed (cold water) the flowers, due to black fly, etc.

I didn't wash them for the second batch, as I thought that I may have washed out any natural yeast from the flowers - a tad misguided there - I'll steep them in boiling water for the next batch.

Bit worried now as we tried the first batch last night, and it was very nice, couldn't taste the alcohol, but felt it! It's a little too sweet - not sure what do do about that. But more worrying was the amount of pressure in the bottle - I'm using screw top wine bottles, with the lids taped to the main body of the bottle - but there is some serious pressure, the tops of the bottles are now rounded instead of being flat - hope they can cope!!

Trying to keep costs down, but may buy some Ikea 1l swing top bottles for 2 quid a pop - unless any better ideas?

[Invalid Stout]

I've had a problem with mould on my last batch. When I opened the bucket to bottle it, there was a thin layer of mould on top. This happened once before but I thought I'd beaten it by adding a good long soak in a bleach solution to my sanitation regime. It's a new bucket too, not the same one that was affected before.

The mould is white, not blue or green and the beer tastes fine. I thought I'd be okay leaving it in primary for two weeks, as I didn't peek at it except briefly to add dry hops. The hop bag was boiled. It seems I need to bottle after 10 days at the latest to avoid this, at least in the warm weather. What do other people do to protect their beer?

Maybe I'm lucky and it's a film yeast, not mould ...

[Invalid Stout]

This has happened to me with another batch and it's driving me up the wall. Same thin white chalky film on top of the beer. Last time I assumed I'd not boiled my hop bag long enough and had introduced infection that way. It can't be that this time as I didn't dry hop. I left the lid on the bucket throughout the entire fermentation.

My sanitation regime is as follows:

1. Hose out residue of previous brew immediately after bottling.
2. Soak bucket in hot soda solution to clean, and rinse.
3. Soak in bleach solution for a day or so, rinse with clear water.
4. Good rinse with Videne solution before next use.

I thought it would be sufficient, but clearly not.

[timmydog]

I don't know if any of you saw Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall make elderflower champagne in his River Cottage series on TV, but he got 2 bins, made a batch in each (boiled water, lemon juice and sugar then left it to cool before adding the elder flowers) and just left them to ferment with wild yeast from the flowers.

After a day or 3, he went back to check them out and there was a layer of white mould on top of 1 and the other was fermenting merrily. He skimmed the mould off the top of the liquid then mixed the 2 batches together to help the fermentation in the bad bin. Both batches came out ok in the end, but I would be cautious of mouldy stuff, because some of them produce bad flavours or possibly poisons.

When ever I've made some, I've added some yeast to supplement the wild yeasts, but not boiled the flowers, because I want to keep the delicate aroma.

So far, so good (but I've only made it 3 times).

Tim