I made a chocolate-cherry brown ale with an extra ounce of hops (in 5 gallon carboy) back at the beginning of October. Would it be safe to bottle and skip secondary fermentation? There's also a thin layer of white stuff on top (mold?). Is it still good to bottle?
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1 Answer
If you brewed your beer in October, then most probably the fermentation process is over (most of the time the turbulent aka primary fermentation only takes a week).
The best way to ensure is to measure the gravity of your wort, wait a couple of days and measure it again, if it does not change, than your primary fermentation is basically over.
When you say "skip secondary", you mean skip transferring into a second carboy, in fact the secondary fermentation is a state that occurs after the turbulent (primary) fermentation, so it happens whether you transfer or not.
For the white stuff, it's hard to say without seeing, if it is just a thin layer on a little surface of your wort, is probably just foam and byproducts from fermentation. The best way to know is just to taste your beer, bacteria that infect wort are not harmful for men, if it tastes ugly or like vinegar, than likely your wort was infected.
