Pellicle weirdness

Hi guys,

I am brand new to the forum and was hoping you could help put my mind at ease. I am currently brewing a Bulldog beer kit, the Cobnar Wood Northern Brown. I decided to do this one by the book.

When I started the brew, all seemed to be going according to plan. Then large bubbles and what looked to me like mould began to develop around the floating bag of dried hops pellets. This is about my 4th or 5th brew and I have never witnessed anything like this before. It is also my first time using a hops bag. Anyway over the next few days it developed into what seemed to me to be a thick layer of mould.

Worried about what was happening I searched the internet to find out what was going on and came across a site (should have bookmarked it) that said it was probably a "pellicle" created as a chemical reaction due to the type of yeast that was used. It also said that these yeasts should be given extra time to do their thing.

So I left the brew in the fermentation bucket for about 2 months, maybe nearly 3, when I decided to bottle and keg it. I don't have much room in my place so I usually bottle some of the beer and keg the rest. This time I have more bottles than ever, 24. So here is what it looked like by the time I was bottling:



That's obviously the hops bag in the middle there.

So the beer has now been in the bottles/keg for around a month. About 2 weeks ago I noticed that a pellicle looking layer is forming on top of the beer in the bottles.

Now I can't remember what I read, but something had led me to believe that once the original pellicle was rid of that the beer would be fine. So I am now worried that my beer is actually undrinkable. Is this the case?

I have also heard about pellicles dropping. Did I screw this up by not waiting on the pellicle to drop in the fermentation bucket?

If it is drinkable, should I mix the pellicle into the beer, or scoop it off, or strain it out before drinking? I can't imagine my friends wanting to drink it with a layer of this stuff on the top.

Your help is much appreciated,

Cheers

Ah come on lads. I'm sure somebody here knows what's going on.

Is there nobody that can help me?

What you have here is the pellicle from wild yeast, I'm not sure I've ever seen this from regular brewers yeast so my guess is its an infection from wild yeast. The most common wild yeast to infect beer is Brettanomyces, these are what Lambic beers are made from.

In your case this is an accidental infection and you most likely wont going to get the beer you originally indented on brewing, you will probably produce a sour beer (Lambic).

Either embrace your sour beer and even try to harvest the yeast for future sour beers, or if your not a fan of the sour... this brew isn't going to be much good!

JAK,

Thanks for your reply.

I suppose I'll have to taste it to see if I like it. Do you reckon I should just pour the bottle into a glass and drink it, or should I somehow remove the pellicle?

Cheers

merrygold85 said:

JAK,

Thanks for your reply.

I suppose I'll have to taste it to see if I like it. Do you reckon I should just pour the bottle into a glass and drink it, or should I somehow remove the pellicle?

Cheers

Click to expand...

I've never made a sour so I'm not sure on any techniques.

I'd remove it though, if you do like sours and like how it tastes try and harvest the wild yeast off it for future brews. People spend a lot of time and effort to capture those things! Being wild you have no idea of how it'll ferment and what kind of flavours it'll produce - this could be some superb competition winning sour producing yeast you've caught! Or it could taste vile...

Well, I had a taste of it from the keg, rather than opening a bottle. It was pretty awful. I reckon I'll to get rid of it