Visual mead diagnosis
Upload a photo of your mead's surface. Pellicle tells you whether it's mold, kahm yeast, pellicle, surface oils, or normal foam — and what to do next. In under ten seconds.
Surface photo · Day 18
Classification
Verdict
Kahm yeast.
Batch is fine.
Next steps
Why we built this
Every week, thousands of perfectly good batches get dumped because the brewer couldn't tell kahm yeast from mold. The subreddit helps — eventually — but fermentation doesn't wait on response times. We trained a model on real homebrew surface images so you don't have to guess, wait, or waste the thing you spent months making.
Process
Natural light, shot from above. Kahm rings, fuzzy patches, oil slicks — capture whatever's there. No special equipment.
< 30 secondsDrop the photo into Pellicle. Add optional context: batch age, gravity reading, any smell you've noticed. More signal, sharper result.
< 10 secondsClassification, confidence breakdown, and a plain-language next-step list. No hedging. If it's mold, we say mold.
InstantClassification guide
Only one of them requires action. Pellicle knows which.
A harmless but persistent white or cream film. Flat, non-fuzzy, forms at the margins. Smells slightly sour. Your mead is fine.
Fuzzy, raised, blue-green or black growth. Musty smell. Often spotted, not uniform. Distinct from the surface texture.
A ropy, wrinkled, or cauliflower-textured film from wild yeast or bacteria. Common in natural meads. A sign of complexity, not failure.
Iridescent slick from fruit fats or honey compounds. Breaks apart when disturbed. No odor change. Completely normal.
Active fermentation bubbles, often with yeast clumps. Appears in the first 72 hours and gradually subsides. Nothing to act on.
From the brewing community
“I was three seconds from dumping a 10-gallon batch. Pellicle told me it was kahm. It was. That mead placed second at a regional show.”
Marcus T.
Home Meadmaker, Portland
“The subreddit is great but it takes hours to get a response and then half the answers contradict each other. This is just faster and cleaner.”
Renata C.
Commercial Winemaker turned Mead Hobbyist
“Finally something that speaks in fermentation vocabulary instead of generic food safety warnings. The confidence percentages actually tell me something.”
Dev O.
r/mead contributor, 6 years brewing
Questions
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The Mead Lab
That fuzzy white layer on your mead's surface could be harmless kahm yeast — or it could be mold that ruins your batch. Learn the exact visual cues that separate the two, so you never have to guess again. We break down color, texture, smell, and spread patterns with real reference photos.
From silky pellicles to oily sheen and fuzzy mold patches, your mead's surface tells a story — if you know how to read it. This guide covers all 7 common surface anomalies homebrewers encounter, what causes each one, and whether you need to dump the batch or just relax. Bookmark this before you panic.
Most mead infections don't come from bad luck — they come from skipping a single sanitation step at the wrong moment. We compiled the 9 most common contamination mistakes from thousands of homebrewer reports, with concrete fixes for each. Get these right and a fuzzy surface becomes a problem of the past.
The instinct to skim off mold and hope for the best is understandable — but is it safe? We dig into the fermentation science behind mycotoxin production, how deep contamination actually spreads, and under exactly which conditions experts say a batch can — or absolutely cannot — be saved. The answer may surprise you.