Mold in Airlock?

I had this great plan to make my first post tomorrow asking for some feedback on my next recipe and going over my limited mead making experience; However, it seems my airlock had other plans for me. So I am just going to jump right into my question, and make a proper introduction later.

After I finished bottling a one gallon batch of straight mead today I noticed that there was some mold hiding in the back of the airlock. This mead has been in the secondary for several months now, with Potassium Metabisulfite and Potassium Sorbate added soon after. I was going to fill the airlock with vodka at the time, but I was out, so I used a strong Gin instead. I thought the Gin would work just as well, I guess I was wrong.

Here is a picture of the mold itself. I would say that it is about 3/16" at it's widest point, it is maybe 1/8" thick and very smooth. It would apear to be about three-fourths black and one-fourth white in color.


Here is a (bad) picture of a bottle of the mead itself. It is fairly clear, smells fairly strong of alcohol, and tastes okay to me.


So what do the experets out there think, is it okay to drink, or am I going to be serving poison for Thanksgiving?

Thanks for all the replies. Since everyone pretty much agrees that it should be okay, I have been drinking the mead from that batch; and I have yet to get sick :icon_thumleft: I went ahead and bleached that airlock and put it back in service. I am going to start keeping a closer eye on these things so that it doesn’t happen again.

On another note, I finally made what I had intended to be my first post over in the brew log. I’m taking every possible precaution not to get mold in this one!