Anyone know what this is on my Cantillon cork?

You must horticulture up the best stuff..

 

Head down to the pharmacy and get some Corkistat 3.

 

Send it to a microbiologist to confirm it's several types of wild yeast and bacteria which are also found at the bottom of the bottle and suspended in the beer.

 

[quote="Highbrow, post: 1344039, member: 549i guess what i'm confused about and may very well be wrong - but i thought "cork infection" is when a cork has hidden or dormant fungus that later goes active & eats at a cork. i guess what i'm trying to say is i don't think it generally comes from beer exposure or depends on how "robust" a beer is/isn't. anybody???[/quote]
Yes, corked wine and corked beer are nasty. About 3-4% of the cork prduced has the taint, and you can taste it down to 0.1 ppt. That is almost nothing.

 

Trust me, you don't want to taste the taint.

 

Hepatitis C.

 

Isn't that precisely what speculation is?

 

Honestly, I have never seen anything like that in a bottle of Cantillon and I have seen/open a lot of bottles (not bragging, I work at a beershop and we sell Cantillon). It does seem a bit odd, how old is the bottle/how has it been stored?

 

next time you see a lot, send me one

 

come on over to paris and buy all you want

 

Do you work at la cave de bulles?

 

Turn it upside down so it can swim back in, yo!

 

I have seen that before on one or two bottles, it is just that yeast has solidified near the cork - a result of the beer being stored on its side/ with the cork facing downwards slightly. Just tip the bottle up and down or shake it lightly and it should go into suspension in the beer. Then if you store it upright for a few days it should settle on the bottom of the bottle.

It does however also look like the cork might be damaged, so be careful when opening it. Cork in your beer is not great, but better than what happened to my bottle of Shot in the Dark that had a damaged cork - as I opened the bottle, the cork broke in the neck at a very strange angle. This left a tiny hole on one side and (since the beer was a crazy gusher) a VERY high pressure jet of purple/red liquid shot out into my face, onto my pool table and onto the ceiling

 

You say that as if quantum physicists are somehow smarter or better than people that are knowledgeable about beer.

 

my thoughts exactly.

also, i asked to see a picture of the complete top because looking at the incomplete image, i get the impression there might be another indicator that the bottle was exposed to excessive heat.

 

So in other words it was speculative?

 

It is evidence of deliciousness.

 

I saw a bottle of classic gueze that a guy brought to a tasting recently that was from 1996. The cork was what looked to be moldy- maybe similar to the OPs. Beer tasted just fine. And by fine, I mean awesome!

 

Your beer may be infected with wild yeast and bacteria.