Help Thrush On My Beer Or Is It Fine "{pics}

[gonzo]

Ok i went to bulk prime today i had a coles draught on secondary and to my suprised there was yeast on top of the beer like it had started to ferment again.

My recipe is
coles kit yeast + starter of Cascade spicy ghost yeast which i have been lead to believe is a lager yeast
Coles Draught kit 1.7kg
coopers BH1
500g honey

@ secondary i boiled up 200g of strawberrys and 100g of water melon, then filtered the fruit water through a coffee periculator ( disenfected) and added to the brew.

All seems fine until today when i opened the lid to pour the priming sugar in and there was yeast and bubbles on top, with a crystal clear brew on the bottom.

It tastes ok , actually a bit winey, with a hint of fruit , then a bitter after taste, but not much hit straight up.

Is this an infection or has the yeast started fermenting the fruit sugars thus producing yeast on top.

here are pics.

There does seem to be some floaties in the beer quite tiny

 

[ant]

Thrush?


... just what exactly are you using to stir your brews? h34r:

 

[razz]

Iv'e necer done fruit beer Gonzo so I'm only guessing, could the scum be the fruit particles that made it through the perc ? :blink:

 

[Wortgames]

You'll get quite a lot of scum on a beer like that I reckon. Both the honey and the fruit will contain impurities and proteins that will end up collecting on the surface if you don't skim them during the boil.

How long has it been in secondary with the fruit, and at what temp?

Obviously the fruit contains more fermentables which will need to fully ferment out before bottling. If you are adding more fermentables at the secondary stage, then I would think about going to a tertiary stage afterwards for a week or two.

If it looks like normal beer krausen then you are probably fine. If it looks like a white film or blotches then that could be a sign of infection.

 

[hopmonkey]

there are plenty of sugars for your remaing yeast to consume, although i would suspect that it would take some time for the yeast to adapt to the new carb source (yeast become specialised in one food source, the sugars in fruit are different to the ones we brew with.)
has it been in secondary long? most fruit beer recipies i have read (never done one) and fruit wines need a couple of months to mature (maybe this is the cause of the lack of taste in your brew)
as i side thought, wine recipies always recomend washing the fruit in sodium met before boiling etc to remove wild yeasts. i am sure the boils get rid of them but maybe if it is an infection thats where it may have come from?
What you need is a fruit lambic brewer to stumble on this post and give you some proper info tho, they will know for sure!

 

[gonzo]

it just looks like normal fernenting yeast, Its been on secondary for abit over a week, I saw it today, it doesnt smell bad.

 

[Brewtus]

I have done two spicey ghost ales and both sat happily at 20-22 deg. Not the sign of lager yeast. what temperature did you ferment at?

 

[gonzo]

between 15 and 18

The beer on the bottom is crystal clear on the bottom ,yet frothy on the top, thats why i though it was an infection

 

[Ash in Perth]

I have done two spicey ghost ales and both sat happily at 20-22 deg. Not the sign of lager yeast.

I have never used this but a lager yeast would quite happily ferment at 20-22 Deg but it would not taste much like a lager.

 

[gonzo]

I had another look this morning its still on the top, and i have taken an SG reading of 1009 its sg when i put in the strawberry water was 1008 so maybe its started to ferment again
]
any suggestions on what i can do folks

 

[Trough Lolly]

IMHO - it's fine...leave it go for a few more days and keep it no higher than 18C.
If you had an infection, you'd be seeing an exponential growth of scum and Wortgames covered that nicely in his post. As hop_monkey suggests, the yeast had to go through a re-adaptation to the new sugar source and you need to anticipate that delay in future fermentations, especially if you are adding sugars during the attenuative / primary fermentation phase or the secondary / conditioning phase.
I'd check it again at the weekend but unless it starts blowing foam out of the airlock or smelling like a knackery on a hot day, you'll be ok - as the fermentation progresses, your beer is progressively becoming a more hostile environment for bacteria to establish itself into anyway. Don't be surprised if you end up with a final gravity under 1.005...
Cheers,
TL