I’ve got a fungus. PIC’s INSIDE!!!

My first spontaneous fermentation. I tried to roughly follow a turbid mash schedule and then did a long boil, covered my kettle with some cheese cloth and let it cool overnight in my 35 F garage. Then I racked it to a carboy...no additional yeast or bacteria was pitched. After 3 days, I had visible signs of fermentation that lasted a week or so, and then it dropped clear. It’s been about 5 weeks since that time, and I have what appears to be white moldy patches on the surface, but I’m not 100% sure. Take a look:







Sorry for the quality of the pictures.... the white patches are pure white and are kind of fuzzy. I’m not sure what the big brown blobs are... coagulated proteins?

The fuzziness of the white stuff makes me think it’s mold, but I know pellicles can sometimes look like powdered sugar. Anyone ever see something like this before?

paging Dr. CLevar

That looks like fun, guy.

ewww

Can’t be good. I actually had a dream recently that I took off the jacket around my carboy and there was mold on top. Not sure how to fix this!

Originally posted by Homer321
That looks like fun, guy.

Looks like mold to me. Mold requires oxygen to grow, which is why it can be a problem when you don’t get any fermentation early to draw down the O2 and give you a CO2 blanket. But, it sounds like you had a good ferment before this problem came up?

I guess I’d just purge the headspace with CO2 and keep an eye on it. If it turns into more of a normal looking pelicle I wouldn’t worry. Right now there’s not much to do but wait and see. No harm in that. I would NOT sample it though.

Thanks Caleb. I have access to a microscope, so I was thinking of getting a sample to check, but I think you’re right.

Do you think it’s worth taking a gravity reading and checking pH?

Checking grav and pH isn’t really going to tell you if you have mold or not. A high pH is permissive for mold, and residual extract isn’t going to help matters either, but without oxygen you should be ok.

On that topic, is the aluminum foil the only thing on that carboy? That could be the source of the problem. Thats not going to slow down oxygen diffusion at all once active ferm has ceased.

RIP OTD

If that happened to me it would just toss it. Otherwise the nightmares about the The Blob would start again.