Holiday Ale postmortem (or How I accidentally started a lambic)

The holiday ale was just thrown down the drain.

Cause: bacterial growth

Symptoms: persistent "fermentation" (aka bubbling in the airlock), even far past the window it should happen, a weird sour apple smell out of the airlock.

Confirmation:

• Percent sugar recorded at ~3% by hydrometer after almost two weeks with consistent bubbling implies a "gusher infection" per How to Brew
  
• That sour lambic smell that shouldn't happen in a holiday ale.
  
• Wort tasted and confirmed un-sugary and un-alcoholy. And just plain wrong. Yes, I drank bacterially-contaminated wort.
  

Things to do better next time:

• Sanitize equipment better (we used unsanitized equipment to squeeze the hops bags outside the acceptable temperature range to do such a thing, and I can think of a couple other things we could sanitize better)
  
• Sanitize hands (hand sanitizer purchased)
  
• Take a specific gravity reading so I can earlier test when something seems wrong and pull the plug earlier, with more confidence.
  

Ok, that's all I got, folks. Scotch ale being brewed next week on an evening.