Floaties

[Stevelaz]

Went down to check on my wine and i saw some weird substance floating on top of a 6 gallon carboy of Carmenere and also in a jug of Merlot. Very little in my demi john of Merlot. Ive have had on oak spirals for about 9 weeks and also did malo on this years batch. I used a turkey baster to get most out and then racked the Carmenere and look good and taste ok at this point... Any idea what this could be? I was wondering if its something left over from malo. This is a Chilean batch from April....

 

[Ajmassa]

Can you describe it at all? It seems odd to appear this far down the line. Are all your acid levels in good range?
I had some surface issues but it was on the new fall wines. Started as an oily spotty surface that eventually kinda dried out forming a sort of skin.
I already had high amount of so2 in there so I lowered the pH from 3.9ish down to 3.6ish.
I removed the oily spiderwebby skin on the surface with paper towels. Rolling one up and using each end to absorb the stuff there. Took a good amount but it worked well without looking much Wine. I had to repeat this a second time 2 days later. I also had my K-meta/citric acid sanitizer in a spray bottle and gave each vessel a good spritz directly into em before plugging back up for maybe 3 days in a row. And another time a week later.
So far so good.

 

[Stevelaz]

I'm really not sure how long its been there, have not really look at it for at least a month. Its like cream colored specks. I also used a paper towel and got most out before racking. It was mushy and really had no bad odor to it. Kinda looked like maybe leftover yeast, malo culture, or nutrient. However, didn't seem to effect the wine and so far it has not come back.

 

[Ajmassa]

Mushy cream colored specks covering the surface?...I’ve had my fair share of surface issues over the years. Cloudy hanging ropes, oily spots, hard floating crystals, o2 bubbles refusing to dissipate, dried “skin”, spiderwebbish oiliness, mycoderma once, and my Mona Lisa, a dead mouse. (Ok. The mouse was in a fermenter, but still a surface issue nonetheless)
If anything that looks and sounds like mycoderma aka flowers of wine. (Spotty growth eventually resembling small rice grains at surface). BUT I can confidently say nobody could ever smell that bacteria odor and not immediately know something seriously eff’d up going on.
If you haven’t, I would at the very least hit it with a dose of K-meta.

 

[wxtrendsguy]

Its mycoderma, nothing to be too concerned about. Wipe the inside neck of the carboy with an SO2 solution then top the carboy to just a hair under the bung. Another way to get rid of it is to overflow the carboy with a little topping wine. Once ML is complete get it sulfured and topped with an airtight bung and you should be fine.
Another way to remove mycoderma is with a papertowel, just tear strips and let it float on the surface the wine the scum will be quickly grabbed by the paper towel and then tossed out. The surface bacteria is usually a result of too much air exposure...but could also be contamination leftover in the carboy from last year.