Dumping an infected batch. You don’t want to keep that around. So when do you cut ties and dump a batch? How about on day four after brewing? It was a rough choice, but I had to do it. I had to drain pour some bottles in the past, but a whole fermenter during the first stages is a new one for me.
Brew Day
Brew day was a fun day. It was a Sunday afternoon. A cold day, so while I was outside, I chose to multitask and smoke some food for watching the Pro Bowl with. The brewing went off without a hitch. I used some Wunder grains from Austin Homebrew and Zythos hops. I used a little Columbia hops from Tenacious Badger Hops for bittering. I decided to let the cold weather chill my wort.
Mashed in 
Getting my wort 
Smoking and brewing…..a perfect afternoon 
Letting Mother Nature chill my wort 
Adding in the Zythos hops
Where I think I went wrong was my yeast starter. It had been on the stir plate for longer than normal. I wonder if something snuck into my process there. I pitched my yeast starter. I started my internal fermentation clock.
Three days go by. No action in the airlock. Through the side of my Fast Fermenter, I don’t see any krausen level, so I open it up. That’s when I find this:
So, it doesn’t look quite right. I grab a little sample, and it isn’t sour. So of course, I turn to the Reddit homebrewing section. I asked the Internet. I wasn’t ignored.
The tell tale comment that tipped me over the edge was this one: “Infected, it looks like. I see the tell-tale powdery white bubbles.” I decided it was time to let this one go.
The Dumping And Sanitizing
So, I started the difficult process. I dumped the fermenter. I cleaned the fermenter. I made some new Star San in my spray bottle. I sprayed down everything. I cleaned my yeast starter flask, and sanitized that. Ugh. Not how I wanted to spend a day off.
In the End….
Carpe Cerveza. Seize the beer. Move forward. Know when to cut and run. I could have let it ride like some posters suggested on Reddit and gotten a sour. I just didn’t want to put more time and effort into a beer and end up with nothing. So I found myself dumping an infected batch. Has it happened to you? Let me know in the comments below!
