Starsan in airlock

[01TRV]

I have a brewers best oktoberfest about two weeks in at ~52 degrees. It is my first time doing a lager and just noticed some brown discoloration coating my airlock pieces. Shouldn't the starsan in the airlock keep anything from growing? Almost looks like brown algae. Took about a week before I saw decent airlock activity and small krausen. I am also picking up a little sour smell that seems different than I am used to, but It may just be that the gas is settling in the freezer and I am getting a much more concentrated whiff of it. What do you guys think about the airlock thing and the smell?

 

[Mozart]

My chest freezer / fermentation chiller gets a really strong, funky smell too. It's probably par for the course and just concentrated ferementation gasses as you suspect.

As for the brown discoloration, is it possibly just a little krausen that got into your airlock?

 

[flars]

Properly mixed Starsan will keep stuff from growing. Could the brown be some of the krausen which entered the airlock? The smell may be CO2.

What is the size of your fermentor?

 

[01TRV]

6.5 gallon carboy and a 5 gallon batch. If it were an ale I would think it was wort, but this one doesn't look like it got anywhere near the neck. Its been a pretty calm ferment which is to be expected with a lager I have read. I topped up the airlock with some more starsan out of my spray bottle. We'll see what happens. I'm not terribly concerned as the wort still looks good. I'll probably swap out the airlock with a clean one though just in case.

 

[Mozart]

I'll probably swap out the airlock with a clean one though just in case.

Might not be a bad idea, especially prior to lagering as the drop in temperature can sometimes cause a little of the liquid in the airlock to get sucked back into the brew.

 

[01TRV]

Here are a few pics I grabbed. There is a floating whole hop on the surface that I added at the end of the boil which shows up as a brown spot on the surface in the one image. One or two ending up in the wort shouldn't be a prob since they were boiled right? I figured a late addition of my first year willamette harvest would be go nicely with the kit. I don't even know if the small ziplock bag I ended up with will be noticeable.

 

[Hello]

It could just be krausen. I would simply clean it well when your batch is done.