Hey everyone- I have a question about infections that I was hoping to get some insight on. I'm new to home brewing and wanted to get my feet wet with brewing so I asked a friend who home brews to make the Pliny the Elder kit for me from Morebeer.com. We brewed the kit and all went well- fermentation was fine (2 weeks) and transfer to secondary was also fine (10 days). Everything looked and tasted good at both stages, including bottling. The brew has been in the bottle for a week now and I'm noticing some "clouds" suspended in the middle and sides of the bottle. There is nothing forming at the tops of the beer- just haze on the sides and middle. There is sediment on the bottom as well. As I'm sure most of you know, there is considerable amount of dry hopping in the secondary for this brew (5 oz if memory serves me correct) so my question is if the haze I see in the bottles could just be hop particulates from the excessive dry hopping or if there is a more sinister organism at play. If this is a sign of infection, is there anything that can be done through temperature control to minimize its effect to salvage the beer? Thanks for the insights. I'm new to all of this so please forgive any newbie assumptions I might be making here
I think you're over-thinking (over-worrying) this. If you brewed with an experienced homebrewer and followed good sanitizing procedures to minimize the prospect of any infection then you're going to be okay. What you are observing is likely something settling out of your beer. It could be the priming sugar, solids/yeast still in suspension from your wort, etc. Sediment in the bottom of the bottle is normal and to be expected in any bottle-conditioned beer, so don't worry about that.
Your question was answered above, but I'll respond to add to the chorus. You're fine. Enjoy you first homebrewed beer in two weeks, and welcome to the obsession.
Depending on the yeast, the beer could spend upwards of 8 weeks progressively clarifying in the bottle. You could open one of the bottles at 2 weeks just to re-assure yourself, though. Depending on how big this beer is, it will should be mostly carbonated by then.
A couple points to make in support of everything said so far: (1) unless you did something egregiously wrong by introducing a huge population of infectious agents, infections generally take a while to show up. (2) hops are inhibitory to many bacterial agents of infection; the hopping levels of a Pliny clone probably make fore a pretty suppressive environment. I suspect those clouds you see are not the result of an infection, and furthermore, I think your beer ought to be tasty. Let us know how it turned out, and keep on brewing.
Update: beer has been fine so far. The first bottle I opened foamed over as soon as I opened it, which I was pretty discouraged by. Once I poured the beer it smelled and tasted great- nothing off at all. But every bottle since has been fine- no foam-overs or gushers at all. Don't know what happened to the first bottle, but everything else has been great.
There are several possibilities. Most likely is that the priming sugar was not evenly distributed throughout your beer before bottling.
The most obvious reason is what Vikeman said, but that first bottle could have gushed on you because of rough handling or not being chilled. Being your first beer, were you a bit over-anxious?
