May be obvious contamination???

[71MoneyPit]

I brewed my first all grain Irish red, everything was going great until about a week after racking, and then I seen the white frost start to form. I keep reading to check the gravity and give it a taste before I throw it out, but I just have my reservations on mold.
Questions:
1. Should I throw it out?
2. Someone said to purge my container with CO2 before and after racking?
3. Extra fresh batch of StarSan?

 

[CU_tony]

Hmm, looks moldy to me from this shot. Is fermentation done? How does it taste?
1. Unless it's putrid I would let it ride (unless someone can chime in about that type of mold)
2. I don't purge my primary and have had no problems with contamination or oxidation. I believe that's more common for secondary if you wanted to age for a while.
3. Star San should be good for many months. I change my batch when it starts to look cloudy, which won't happen for a while of you wash and rinse everything first. If this is a concern for you, buy some cheap ph strips and you can test it's acidity to see when you need to change.
It looks like a plastic vessel, I would check for scratches and give a thorough soaking and cleaning after this batch before proceeding with caution.

 

[Brownalemikie]

Hmmm, hope its not infected. Looks like other pics I've seen that were infected. Good luck!

 

[unionrdr]

Looks infected to me from too much head space.

 

[madscientist451]

You don't need to rack your beer to another carboy, just let it sit in the primary vessel until you are ready to bottle. The primary fermentation produces Co2, so the beer is protected for a while, although it will dissapate if you open the carboy to take smples. If you do need to rack your beer for long term aging or for some other reason, be aware of your volumes. Use a 6.5 gallon primary fermenter with and have a target of 5.5 gallons of beer. Then when you rack to a 5 gallon carboy, you'll fill it all the way to the neck. Adding a dose of Co2 is good practice.
For your current beer, I'd pull a sample and seee what it tastes like. If its ok, I'd go ahead and bottle it. After it carbs up you can do a stovetop pasterurization if you think the surface mold might cause a problem.

 

[Hello]

Looks infected to me from too much head space.

This certainly isn't an issue in a primary fermentation case. It appears this happened in primary just after pitching yeast. So it does look infected, I would not say it's due to headspace. There's enough CO2 being produced during primary fermentation for head space to not be a huge issue. At least not that much. In secondary, or bulk aging, headspace can be an issue and if you're unable to fill a fermenter, then purging with CO2 is best.

 

[IslandLizard]

It doesn't look like mold to me, but it surely has the looks of a pellicle forming from some infection. The infection is in your beer, the pellicle is just a side effect, protecting the "bugs in charge" from other intruders. Could be some wild yeast and/or other micro organisms. Lactobacillus is all around us, and can infect your beer easily.

Double check your cleaning and sanitizing routines. A dirty hose, racking cane, fermentor, basically anything that touches your beer after the boil.

The headspace is huge for a secondary. As @madscientist451 said, secondaries are rarely needed. They're really a niche, need some planning and advanced handling techniques to prevent infection, oxidation and other unwanted characteristics.

Take a sample from underneath the pellicle, and taste it. If it's off, it could make a nice sour ale in a few months, but odds are it won't. Then there's the oxidation issue.

 

[unionrdr]

This certainly isn't an issue in a primary fermentation case. It appears this happened in primary just after pitching yeast. So it does look infected, I would not say it's due to headspace. There's enough CO2 being produced during primary fermentation for head space to not be a huge issue. At least not that much. In secondary, or bulk aging, headspace can be an issue and if you're unable to fill a fermenter, then purging with CO2 is best.

This being a secondary, it is very much an issue. He mentioned racking it in 1st post...

 

[MaryB]

If it is at FG bottle it, drink it fast... or mentioned wait it out and see if you won the bug lottery...