A Botched Brew

I doubt that nothing sickens me more than the smell of mold, you know, the rotting essence that covers sandwiches after you forget to eat them and happen to store them in an otherwise-forgotten compartment in your backpack, which took place one fine day after a football session in my last year as a secondary school student. I opened my bag to look for a place to store my sweat-soaked T-shirt, and came across the packed sandwich that I had packed away, three weeks ago.

It was stored in a loaf packet, you know, the types where a whole commercially-cut loaf comes with, and despite it being zipped away without me knowing about it for that many days, there was enough bacteria to invade the former goodness of the intended meal and transform it into The Smell That Should Not Be. I only had to open the top a little bit before my sense of smell was overpowered by a waft that emanated from the greenish-brown wave that swept across the bread, and perhaps the ham as well.

Being the responsible person that I was, I kept my nose in the other direction as I reached the classroom window, the first floor of the school building, and tossed the offending material out onto the grass next to the likely-mosquito-infested drains that were commonplace in Malaysia at the time, and if I'm not wrong, still is at the moment. If I were to dump it into the open wastepaper-basket that sat in the corner of the classroom, it would stink up the area in no time at all and perhaps result in a disrupted afternoon class session.

Perhaps I shouldn't have thrown it out the window after all, but I remember gagging and coming close to throwing up there and then that I simply chose the quickest means of disposing. The problem was solved, and I doubt I had encountered any more episodes that concerned massive amounts of mold, particularly those that resulted from my own negligence.

Until now, where a certain odd smell began to permeate my room space, slightly pungent and not that overwhelming, at least yet, but enough to cause some form of nostril annoyance.

It came from the wardrobe, the built-in-robe that was part of my medium-sized room, from under the beer keg that I had left alone for a few weeks since Decemberish, with the thought that if I were to let the brew stand and ferment on its own, it would produce the proper range of alcohol and taste that I was hoping for.

Yes, I homebrew, or at least, I'm trying to. A thirty-litre keg with twenty-three-litres of water, mixed with perhaps a kilogram worth of malt, another kg of glucose and yeast. I added a bit more yeast when I thought I didn't put in enough because my previous brew came out tasting not much stronger than orange cordial.

Then I found out on Friday afternoon that the tap at the bottom of the keg was not sealed tight, or at least tight enough not to allow a few drops to come out one by one and stain the carpet below. I suspect it was the yeast from the brew that caused the mold to form from the leak to the carpet 'stalks' so quickly. As soon as I lifted the keg, a sightless cloud that stinked of alcoholic puke swept itself at my face, and I gagged before running out of the room.

Enjoy the next picture at your own risk, or scroll down to the next paragraph. I feel that I knew what the Stinkymeat scientists were smelling when they experimented with the process of decomposition.



It was at this point that I held my nose and walked back into my room, lifted the keg to my bathroom and proceeded to empty the contents of the failed alcoholic mixture into a bucket, and from there into the adjacent toilet bowl.





For one, as it flowed from the tap to the bucket, it smelt like beer, what with all the foam and all, but I dared not taste it, a thought which was enforced by this following picture, noticing the leak itself, though it wasn't as much a leak as it was a case of not-so-tight-capping. Next time I'll just use a wrench to seal it.



As I had never encountered cleaning mold from a carpet before, I proceeded with all manner of experimentation in order to remove the smell from the atmosphere of my room. With the cleaning supplies that came with the homebrewing kit, was a 500-gram bag of sodium metasulphite powder, which I had used to sterilize my beer keg, and out of curiousity, sprinkled some onto my toilet bowl and after a single flush, it seemed to clear the hole of any brownish residue. So I then sprinkled a bit of that over the molded area on my carpet, and then I poured hot boiling water out of the notion that hot water pretty much clears everything in terms of dirty dishes.

Of course, I tried to rid the mold with some toilet paper, but that brought me too close to the scene of the crime, and I almost puked there and then. The smell of shit and piss I can take, as I had grown used to it in a sense, walking through badly-maintained streets on many occasions, but not this, which caused me to retreat in a very hasty manner.

The hot water and sodium metasulphite only sought to make the smell worse, even more pungent than it was before. I was hoping that the powder would at least kill the organisms that infested that area of the carpet, so with a shirt wrapped around my nose and with bated breath, I sprinkled washing powder, well, if I couldn't clean it totally, at least I could make it smell nicer. I scrubbed the spot with a brush, and after some minutes, it only served to make the mold spread out more, and while a bit of the smell was gone, it still remained.

Even after I sprayed some Febreeze on the carpet, reducing the stench by loads. But the main part still smelled, so I covered it with some newspapers and placed a phonebook atop, in some sense that it could have suppressed the waft more than it would have without.

It worked to an extent, as I opened the doors and windows to let the smell dissipate, and even as I type this, some hours later, I can still smell the mold-sodiummetasulphite-washingpowder-fabriccleaner mix, and it's not really helping me to breathe easier than I'd like. I probably would have to sleep on the couch in the living room as I did last night. Again. Just to get away from the smell of it all.

So does anyone have any pointers on how to remove mold from a carpet? I have considered cutting out the piece of carpet, or even burning it. But anything really, so long as my nasal functions can operate regularly again.


Currently listening to: Twilightning - The Delirium Veil