Could This Kill You? Infected Beer

is my beer bad is my beer infected is it contaminated is it poison should I dump my beer questions like these are fairly common on reddit's r slash humbering and they're generally asked by folks who are making beer for the first time but we recently found ourselves wondering the same thing after opening up a warm keg and discovering this here's a sample in a glass that's been sitting out for a few days gross huh well what do you think is it bad should we drink it I think we might beer is made by mashing melted cereal grain and creating wart which is basically sugar water it's boiled and hops are added then it's cooled and yeast is added to turn the hoppy sugar water into alcohol and it's primarily the yeast that catches people off guard what looks like a tiny bit of yeast is added to cooled word to kick off fermentation but looks can be deceiving a single package of liquid yeast contains more than 100 billion individual yeast cells and when it gets added to wart the little yeast cells start feasting on the sugar they start growing and they begin to reproduce very rapidly the abundance of sugar and the growth rate causes a massive amount of yeast to be produced relative to the starting pitch and what is called a craisin begins to form on top of the wart which is at first a thick gooey sticky layer of yeast that begins then to froth and foam during High cruising it's visually dramatic to say the least it certainly doesn't look like something you'd want to eat or drink and it catches most new Brewers off guard after fermentation is finished there is still sometimes a bit of sediment floating on top of the liquid there's always yeast stuck to the side of the fermenter and most of the stuff that was once on top of the liquid sinks to the bottom of the fermenter creating a layer of sludge that can be several inches thick so the nature of what beard normally looks like can trick a lot of new Brewers into thinking that what they made is bad when in reality that's just what it looks like there are times when the process goes south and Brewers end up with something that isn't what they expected a range of bacteria and wild yeasts can and will grow alongside the yeast in given the chance that's why it's critically important to clean and sanitize all brewing equipment before making beer it's also important to boil ingredients before fermentation which will kill any bad bugs and prevent things from going south during the fermentation process what has happened here is an instance of the latter because this isn't what beer normally looks like before Brewing I thoroughly cleaned everything and I sanitized everything that the beer would be touching after the boil just like I always do however I made one critical error I didn't Follow The Brew Day instructions that I wrote down for myself I made a thiol boosted IPA with this Phantasm powder quite a while back the directions clearly state that you should add this to the whirlpool which I take to mean like 170 degree trees if I remember it correctly I didn't add it until I had cooled down like way past that meaning that if there's any sort of like natural bacteria on here it was gonna do something to the beer now I'm not saying that that's exactly what happened but that's really the only difference between this beer and any other beer I've you know made recently and this is the only beer that's gotten funky like this so we need to siphon this liquid ad here and it's not going to be easy because there's not a ton of liquid in there and I don't want to use a good siphon for this because whatever that touches it could contaminate it for life britainomyces is not easy to get rid of once you have it I'm confident I can get out of the stainless steel but if I get it in a siphon with a bunch of little parts and pieces that's another story so I'm gonna try and siphon with this hose [Music] it looks really nice I like the color and my impression as I was drinking it as I was siphoning this is that it is on point for like a nasty funky Brett beer um it's not sour at all but it is like Funk to the max the flavor descriptor for britannomyces is I kid you not sweaty horse blanket and I've never tasted a sweaty horse blanket I think I've only even ridden a horse once but uh if I had to imagine what it would taste like this is it it's just got like this Barnyard Funk that is immediately recognizable and undeniable so I'm gonna chill it down and carbonate it and see what that does to it [Music] thank you the white bubbly Dusty looking film on top of the liquid in this glass in an arcade is called a pellicle and it's formed by lactobacillus pediococcus or britannomyces bacteria and wild yeast so back to the original question should I dump this beer or should we drink it well these types of bacteria in yeast are sometimes added to beer to achieve certain characteristics lactobacillus and perioccas produce lactic acid which makes beer taste sour it tastes out a lot of people like britannomyces on the other hand is a wild yeast that produces well wild flavors I guess you could call them beer that's been brewed with Brett is often described as barnyardi I added a massive amount of hops to this beer and hops generally stunt the growth of lacto also if it was petiococcus I'm sure I would be able to smell the acidity which I cannot so we've most likely brewed a Brett IPA and instead of being bummed I'm actually pretty excited because I happen to love Brett ipas I hated Brett beers at first it is definitely an acquired taste but apparently I have acquired that taste so we're going to drink this stuff and not dump it but I wouldn't always suggest doing this in general pellicles are fine if you're into sour funky beers but if the beer had signs of mold which looks very different I would definitely be dumping it that stuff can make you very sick or if it just smells or tastes like absolute garbage yeah I would dump it because what are we drinking we are drinking a Brett IPA that we accidentally brewed we okay I did in the five years plus that we've been brewing and filming for our YouTube channel and really like in my entire life um this is only the second time I think we've accidentally made something that ended up with the pellicle on it yeah that is quote infected the first time was because we uh fermented a beer with an actual log if you haven't seen the log video you have to check that out I think it's the coolest project we ever have yeah no sweet that log definitely had wild yeast on it and we but that was the goal right yeah yeah that was the goal we intentionally did that but then we fermented our next batch of beer in that same bucket it was Mexican lager and in fact there were two buckets and we ended up with 20 no 10 gallons of like funky Mexican lager and that that Mexican lager was outstanding it was good yeah so anyway clean your equipment yeah to keep it separate Yeah clean your equipment and keep your funky bugs separate and if you're gonna add in some weird adjuncts um do it like above you know 170. foreign should we try it yeah let's try it yeah it's pretty good color yeah I like it I'm not picking up a ton of funk by any means nope it's definitely there I mean I I taste it but I also saw the pellicle yesterday and so you know that's on top that's top of mind for me I think I'm getting the most of it's just like a really drying sensation inside my mouth where it's just like um bitter slash dry I can't tell the difference you know it's kind of the same thing [Music] I mean you get a little bit of that wet blanket you gotta hey field or yeah whatever but hey is it yeah I was I was tasting more like coarse blanket yesterday today I'm more like hey cold yeah warm I don't know if I'd want to yeah near it no it wasn't good really um but I mean oh even my standards are really low but it's citrusy a little bit of funky yep I kind of dig it yeah um you know as opposed to like your normal ipas that you know you get all the time I don't know I kind of I kind of think it's kind of nice yeah I haven't had beer in about a week it's a lie I haven't had beer in like four days you didn't turn your lights on in your office all day yesterday I kind of like it yeah cool well I'll see you guys later all right we'll see everybody later because I'm leaving too thanks for watching foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Clawhammer Supply

Views: 26,776

Keywords: beer, brewing, homebrew, brew in a bag, biab, brewing setup, fermentation, diy, do it yourself, is my beer infected

Id: BxuX7S7m2Lk

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2022