good brew down the drain

[Chris]

Racking *may* cause infection, but you'd have to be trying to infect it.

By the time you rack, the yeast is very much in control of the beer. That, and the fact that there is now ethanol, and a low pH to contend with. These all greatly inhibit microbial growth.

Basically, it would be very unlikely to get an infection.

[The Carbonator]

I'd throw my beer away if it didnt look like that

[T-Bone]

Have a look here at a truly infected batch (scroll down the page a bit):

http://www.wienand.org/homebrew/

[Krusty]

Was that one of yours, T-Bone? or did you find it on the net somewhere?
Looks pretty wrong. Just goes to show, you've got to be very careful with cleanliness. I've just started using Brewshield, although I know some people don't trust it, I hope it works though, because it certainly cuts down heaps on the amount of work I was doing before when I was using sodum met.

[T-Bone]

Haha no not mine (thankfully!) I just stumbled across the site one day.

[lethaldog]

You deffinately would not have liked the brew i just racked the other day, tcb classic oak wetpack, was about 2 inches thick on top of the fermenter, Luckily i knew this was normal cos it looks like one of the best ive ever done, i think a good rule to go by is that if its fermenting then just leave it and be patient as even smelly beers usually turn out great and as the guys said thats the main characteristics of a good lager yeast, you should try the wyeast danish lager yeast, I just put one in with an extract lager and it smells as bad as my young blokes nappy on a bad day
Well maybe not that bad but its pretty strong, its actually quite interesting to see the look on peoples faces when you get em to stick their nose over the airlock when it bubbles

[yardglass]

that's a shame mm,

try the W34/70 Lager Yeast, it's a better yeast than the S-23 imho.

have a look at the Krausen on a couple of my brews in the blog below, i used to rack but i don't bother now.

cheers

yard