How to identify MOLD & other WEIRD stuff in your mead, beer, wine, or cider

on this spooky episode of doing the most we are going to walk you through how to identify what that is inside your home brew is it mold it is very common on home brewing forums and Facebook groups for folks to post pictures and ask is my meat or wine or beer or cider infected is this mold or is it something else and on this episode we are going to walk you through how to know what that is in your home brew by using some pictures that do and the most fans have sent in of very normal things in their home brew and we'll show you some pictures of absolutely definitely infected home brews so you can learn how to identify what that is you're seeing if you're very new to home brewing and you've just mixed up your first batch and a few days later there's stuff floating in it or stuff stuck to the side of your carboard boy or bucket never fear 99.9999999% of the time that's normal it's just yeast and particulate maybe it's pollen or fruit matter or little tiny bits of grain that are floating up to the top and just getting stuck because CO2 is pushing that stuff up as fermentation kicks off very very rarely are you going to get a mold infection in a Homebrew alcoholic beverage it's just incredibly incredibly unlikely and it has never happened to me in 13 years of Brewing now I have gotten another kind of infection before a couple of times but it wasn't something that made batches undrinkable or at least unusable if you are in a panic and you don't have time to watch this whole video Never fear I have a Graphic a flowchart to help walk you through a diagnos nois of whether or not you've got mold in your home brew check out the link in the description it'll jump you over to our website where you can find that graphic it is released under Creative Commons so as long as you leave my watermark on there feel free to pass it around the internet I have seen over the last few weeks that it has already made its way to basically every corner of the Brewing internet that I visit so hopefully folks are finding that [Music] helpful mold is very very obvious for one it is almost always above the surface of the liquid there are rare circumstances where you will have grown mold and then it will become saturated and sink to the bottom but generally you're going to notice it long long before that happens if your brew has something on the bottom settling out that's sediment that's dead yeast it's debris that has kind of clumped together and grown heavy enough to fall out it's to totally normal to have stuff settling at the bottom of a fermentation totally normal and again it's totally normal to have Gunk stuck around the sides of a Carboy or a bucket as CO2 pushes that stuff up and out totally normal what's not normal is for it to be blue or red or green or black and growing fur and typically mold will grow in patches that are firm like you could reach in there with a spoon and Scoot SC it out and it would be kind of a firm disc of mold it's really really obvious if you've got something weird that's growing on top of your Brew it's most likely yeast rafts which are when little Blobs of yeast get caught on the CO2 and kind of hang out on the surface for a while and those are totally normal if you kind of jostle the carboy or bucket they usually kind of just kind of meld back into the batch and go away for a while and then a few hours later they might rise back to the surface that's no big deal [Music] either [Music] [Music] there is a form of infection called a pellicle that can come from certain kinds of yeast or bacteria that forms a bofilm on top of your brew a lot of times it will look squiggly like Ramen or it'll have big puffy bubbles it'll be kind of snotty and Blobby and sometimes difficult to break up it might look like pieces of melted and hardened wax that kind of break off and that is not normal unless you put something in there a bacteria or a yeast culture that's supposed to create a pellicle if that's the case generally a pellicle is not going to be dangerous it might taste bad or it might taste fine it might just be soured a little bit the pellicle is generally a sign that your batch is indeed infected but not infected in a way that can harm you but mold can harm you because it produces mot toxins so even if you scoop a little bit of the mold out the mot toxins created by the mold are still all up in inside that brew and unfortunately as much as it sucks you got to dump it out you never want to drink something that grew mold in it now if it's grown a pellicle wait it out maybe rack it sulfite it and see what happens I mean the flavor May develop over time and be something that you can drink or blend with something else to kind of make use of that infected batch but do be cautious that if you do grow a pelic especially inside of a plastic bucket that it may be difficult to ever reclaim that bucket for a new uninfected Brew just be [Music] advised [Music] so where does an infection come from the most common reason you would get an infection in your Brew is poor sanitation it's not properly sanitizing the gear that comes into contact with your Mead wine beer or cider and something gets carried into that that then grows and propagates infecting the whole batch and so sanitizing with for example a no rent sanitizer like starzan is a great way of mitigating the risk of potential infection another risk Vector for infection is exposure to oxygen whether by opening the fermentation vessel too much racking too much maybe an air lock went dry and that's because these microbes tend to need oxygen to do their thing just like our yeast do and because little microbes tend to flow through on the air in the room and so they might fly into a batch that is not properly sealed and then get it infected so it's really important to manage oxygen after you're done with all of your nutrient additions or or kind of messing with it in primary and leave that thing sealed and leave that air lock topped up with water so you don't have any Vector for something getting inside of there another potential risk for infection is contaminated ingredients maybe it's moldy grain or maybe it's a moldy piece of fruit that somehow found its way into your Brew it's really important to check through any ingredients that you're adding to your fermentation to make sure that you don't see anything weird growing in there and you know some folks choose to boil or poach or freeze and thaw their fruit to try and mitigate some of those risks it's one of those things that I kind of treat as an acceptable level of risk I'm always putting grocery store fruit inside of bruise and I haven't had an infection yet and part of that is because we are working to minimize oxygen we are providing proper nutrition and we're using a modern Brewing yeast that takes hold really fast and can out compete most other things that might find their way in there early on and one other potential risk factor I will mention is humidity in a really humid environment mold tends to grow maybe your Brew Room is your laundry room and it gets real warm and humid in there any sugar or Gunk that's on the outside of your fermentation vessel might start to grow mold in that environment ment and then at that point you're just a couple of steps away from infecting your batch on accident maybe you're popping the air lock off to put some nutrient in you drag your sleeve across the mold some of those spores fall into your Brew you seal it back up and suddenly you've accidentally infected it with mold that was growing on the outside of your fermentor because of the conditions in that space so just be aware it's a great idea to keep a spray bottle of starzan around so that way after you've brewed up your Brew you can spray everything down wipe it down and try and make make sure you don't have any stray ingredients on the outside of your fermentation vessel that might grow mold that can find its way inside your fermentation vessel so sanitize properly minimize oxygen exposure check any ingredients that are going in to make sure they don't have mold or weird growths on them and if you're brewing in a high humidity environment make sure that the outside of your Carboy is clean and sanitized regularly and you're keeping an eye on things to make sure you're not getting any weird growths outside the fermentation vessel [Music] again identifying mold is fairly simple it'll be a weird color and a color that's not the same color as one of your ingredients that is in your Brew it'll be fuzzy generally it will smell and taste bad and you will know you should know if you've seen mold growing on bread or cheese or any other kind of fermentation it's pretty obvious to know what mold looks like and to know that you should dump it a pellicle looks like a blob of bofilm and generally it will grow and grow until it covers the entire top of your fermentation it's gnarly looking it usually looks really disgusting but again it's generally safe to consume whatever is underneath that pellicle you just rack from beneath it hit it with some sulfites and let it ride debris from one of your ingredients is pretty easy to identify too it should be the same color as one of your ingredients maybe it's hop debris or again grain particulate or pieces of fruit or pollen or other junk that comes in with raw honey and generally that's going to look flaky and chunky and relatively normal it'll float to the top some may stick around the top and a lot of it is just going to end up falling to the bottom yeast rafts just look like Blobs of yeast they're foamy they're generally kind of whitish beige and again if you shake the fermentation vessel a little bit they should kind of break up and fall out and then might return later a yeast draft is not going to be solid it's not going to form a disc it's not going to form a bofilm it's just going to be foam that's on top I hope that this video is helpful providing some visual examples of what you might see from an infected or not infected and totally normal but still weird looking brew and again we've got a flowchart on our website that will help walk you through the steps of identifying what it is you see in there I would recommend watching this video if you've got something weird floating around in there going through the flowchart and trying to self-identify what that might be but if you are still having trouble or concerns then go to a home brewing group online or a Discord server like discord. doing the.org and ask an experienced Brewer for help identifying it but I want to set your mind at ease that generally it is very rare for you to grow mold in a fermented alcoholic beverage it's just the conditions do not really set you up for that kind of infection if you're using proper Brewing yeast like a wine yeast or an ale yeast and if you are sanitizing and keeping an eye on oxygen exposure if you found this video helpful please hit the like button and then subscribe to our Channel and ring that notification Bell so you don't miss upcoming content from doing the most and thank you as always to our members and patrons who support the channel if you would like to support the channnel there are links in the description for how you can jump on board and support us in our work here on the doing the most YouTube channel until next time happy brewing and cheers happy Halloween everything from me to Creation fermentation doing the most

Channel: Doin' the Most Brewing

Views: 9,141

Keywords: mold, mycotoxins, mold in wine, mold in beer, mold in cider, mold in mead, how to fix moldy wine, how to fix moldy beer, my beer has mold, my beer is infected, is my beer infected, is my wine infected, is my mead infected, is this mold, identifying mold, homebrewing, wine, cider, mead, beer, dointhemost, dump it out, pellicle, brett, pedio, lacto

Id: P5kBUf2ZKHc

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023