I put my Irish blonde ale into secondary this past Sunday. The next afternoon when i checked it the stopper was off. I guess I didn’t push it in tight enough and it popped out. Tonight it has this white layer on the top of it, and I believe co2 bubbles trying to bubble up underneath it. Its mold right?
It’s not as white as the pic makes it seem.
No, that appears to be a spontaneous fermentation going on and is just a little extra fermentables that the yeast found to eat.
Definitely looks like a pellicle from wild yeast, taste it and see if it’s sour or vinegary. Could turn out to be a drinkable sour though so don’t dump it immediately. If it’s acetobacter you will get vinegar.
looks too white and heavy to be acetobacter to me… could be some interesting wild yeast. give it a taste
There’s no way a pellicle or mold would form in a day. He said this appeared right after racking to secondary.
My suggestion is to keep your beer in primary longer and skip the secondary. Two to three weeks in primary works for most homebrewers. You have this second fermenation because the first one wasn’t done and you stirred everything up. But it’s not good since you moved the beer off the majority of your yeast (the “cake”) to get it into secondary.
Don’t think the stopper popping off for a day will have much impact at all, but you may want to drink it fast once it’s in your keg/bottles. It’s a small opening and you probably had positive pressure due to the brewing second fermentation.
For this batch, try to keep it as warm as possible for the next week, maybe two. High 60s to low 70s.
Agreed that it seems soon but I’ve never seen a normal saccharomyces fermentation have connecting blotches like that.
