A Lot of Failures

Hi Guys,

I seem to be having no end of failures lately. Fully 3 out 4 brews I put down fail and I don't know why, I do the same routine each time, hell i'm going so far over the top with cleanliness I even wear rubber gloves now.

Strangely enough the only brews that seem to work are the cheap generic supermarket brands with stock standard sugar.. If I buy a more expensive name brand and use name brand brewing sugar they always fail.

I can't for the life of me work out why, and why the cheap stuff works and the expensive stuff doesn't.

Basic routine is this:

Fill a bucket with sterilized water and soak all implements in it. Put a couple of litres of sterilized water in the fermenter and scrub it out. Put a jugfull of boiled water in the fermenter to rinse it out.

Pour a couple of litres of hot water into the fermenter from the hot water tap. pour in the contents of the can pour in the sugar mix it all up fill the fermenter up with cold tap water/hot tap water till it's about 25C Sprinkle in the yeast and seal it up and put in the airlock.

From here it usually just sits there with no reaction

It's still the tail end of winter over here in Australia but I have a heater which keeps the brew about 24-27C

All expensive brands fail. All cheap brands work :) Tried different brands of cans and different sugars.

Anyone have any idea of what may be happening ? Could I try adding a second yeast ?

Cheers,

Reply to
Fazza
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Clarify what you mean by "sterilized water". Are you using some sort of sanitizing solution? Is it boiled and cooled water? If you are just pouring the latter into a non-sterile bucket and implements, then none of them are sterile at that point.

Reply to
Bill O'Meally

It's a bit unclear to me as well how you actually do your brewing, but I'll try to describe as accurately as possible how I do it. I've made about a dosen batches so far without any problems (some with just malt extract, some with malt extract and sugar) .

If you are even slightly in doubt of the water quality in your area, boil and cool all the water you use. Alternatively you can use bottled water.

Clean all the items you are going to use. After cleaning sanitize them with a sanitizing agent (preferrably something especially made for home brewing). Bleach should work as well, but I've never used it so I can't advise you on how to use it.

Remember to clean and sanitize the fermenting buckets as well. Its best to have two buckets, but you can make beer with just one.

Mix the yeast to a small amount (about 2 desilitres) of warm water (35 degrees celsius), cover it with plastic wrap and leave it alone for 15 minutes.

Boil a small amount (half a desiliter) of water and dissolve a teaspoonful of sugar or malt extract into it. Cover and leave to cool to 35 C. After the yeast has been in the water for 15 min and the sugar water has cooled, pour the sugar water into the yeast water.

In half an hour (probably sooner) there sould be some foaming/churning to be seen in the yeast and sugar water, this means the yeast is alive and well. If nothing is happening, the yeast is probably dead. If so, do all again from the beginning with a new yeast.

The above described yeast proofing method is not strictly required, but will give best results since the yeast has an opportunity to wake up before pitching into the wort. Also you will know for sure if the yeast is alive or not.

Put the extract (and sugar if used) into the sanitized fermenter. Pour the advised amount of boiling water onto them and dissolve completely.

Add as much cold water as the intructions tell you to.

Pour the wort to another fermenting bucket and back again a couple of times. This will aerate the wort so that the yeast has the oxygen it needs in the beginning of the fermentation. If you don't have two fermenting buckets, close the lid of the bucket and shake it vigorously for a while.

Check that the temperature of the wort is in recommended range and pitch in the yeast water. Seal the fermenter and pour some water (or vodka) into the airlock.

Leave the fermenter alone for two weeks instead of the one week advised in most beer kit instructions. This way the conditioning time in bottles doesn't have to be as long, and the beer will taste better after a shorter time than usually.

After two weeks bottle or keg the beer like you would normally do. Remember to clean and sanitize the bottles well. Sanitizing the bottle caps won't hurt either.

Hopefully these instructions will be of use to you. Good luck.

And if you have a bucket of wort that isn't fermenting, try adding another yeast with the instructions above.

Reply to
hevimees

G'day Fazza,

Your method seems ok to me. What do you mean by failures? Do they not start? Ever? How long do you give them? How do you tell if they've started?

I have recently got back into brewing after a break of a couple of years. The first batch I did this time was a Cascade Porter. I did my normal thing and after a few days nothing had happened. Checked with the home brew shop guy and he told me this was pretty normal. The newer, premium, type kits don't necessarily go nuts in 8 hours like your Wander or Coopers ones do.

Also, one of my pet hates is the airlock. Get a poor seal around the lid and the airlock will never bubble. Get a good seal around the lid first day and when it dries out a bit... My airlock and lid sit in a dark corner of my beer equipment cupboard. They never see the light of day, or smell the CO2 from a fermenting batch of beer. Take the rubber O ring out of the lid, stretch some Glad Wrap over the top of the fermenter and hold it in place with the O ring. Use a pin to make a tiny hole to let out the gas. Now you can see if it's fermenting or not. And when it's finished.

Cheers,

Phil

--

24 beers in a carton. 24 hours in a day. Hmmmm.......
Reply to
Phil Miller

You know when I posted that message it had been a full day and a half sealed up with nothing happening and I thought "oh no, another failure"

Got up in the morning and couldn't believe it ... it was merrily bubbling away :) So maybe some of them do need days to get going ... I usually scrap them after two days.

I haven't d>> Fill a bucket with sterilized water and soak all implements in it. >

Yes sterilizing powder added to water :)

I've always wondered though, most of the solutions say to leave stuff soaked for about 20 minutes .... how do you soak a 35 litre fermenter for 20 minutes without it costing you a fortune in sterilizing solution to make 35 litres of it :)

I normally just pour >If you are even slightly in doubt of the water quality in your area,

One bloke who's a champion home brewer over here told me once the water he uses is all from the hot water tap, and he just lets it sit in a big open bucket and the steam rising evaporates all the fluoride or something ... never tried it as I don't have any containers like that.

I have heard of this method before and was thinking of trying it, just to know for sure the yeast is actually good.

I like this idea of oxygenating the wort. I should get a secondary container. Previously I used to fill up garden buckets and pour it in from a bit a height and thought that was a pretty good oxygenation.

The setup I got now though the fermenter fits perfectly under the laundry tap so I just sit it under it and fill. It doesn't come out with a lot of pressure though so I wonder if i'm getting enough oxygenation.

I'll try this.

Thanks all,

Reply to
Fazza

I also do it like this, no problems so far.

Fazza Wrote:

What I meant was: if you th>

If you're interested in why to actually do this, go to

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There's a huge amount of information about home brewing.

Contrary to what is said on How To Brew website there is one thing you should remember: boiling the wort made out of a beer kit is not a good idea. See:

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Reply to
hevimees

I am new to this, but I did recognize a big No,No as far as health reasons and it may also have something to do with things going bad.

You say that you are using hot water from the tap. In your water heater there is a zinc rod that is there to keep the electrolysis from the different metals and the movement of water under heat from eating out the tank of the water heater. Zinc is considered a heavy metal. What you take as a nutrient is a form of zinc salts not pure zinc. To make a long story short you should not consume hot water from the tap. This may also be what is causing the other problem, but I do not know.

BTW: If you replace the zinc rod in the water heater before the life time is up you can get many more years out of it as long as you do not allow scale to build up.

Reply to
Roy Boy

What your getting is fermentation lag.

When your brew is ready to to have the yeast pitched on, it is in a very vulnerable state. Realatively warm, sugary liquid is perfect for bacteria and until the fermentation creates a carbon dioxide barrier over the brew you risk attack.

Dry yeast sachets contain relatively few live cells in a state ready to get going. It takes them time to multiply. This we must help as much as possible.

  1. Make a yeast starter
12-24 hours before brewing, steralise(sanitize) and rinse a milk bottle which will take an airlock. Make up a solution of 2 dessertspoons malt extract to 200ml boiling water to give it about 1040 sg. Put it in the milk bottle(dont fit the lock yet) and microwave it so it boils hard for a few seconds.This kill anything that shouldn't be there. Fit the lock and alow it to cool to 24c.(the airlock will work backwards as it cools). Take off the air lock and shake it like hell to get as much air in it as possible. Add the powdered yeast, replace the airlock and leave it fairly warm until needed. You will see the yeast multiply before your eyes.

  1. Airate your brew Before pitching your yeast, make sure the brew is 20-24c and airate it like mad. You can do this with a whisk, wooden spoon, some even use a fishtank pump. Whatever you use must be sterile.

  2. Pitch your whole starter kit into the brew, cover it and leave it at a constant 20-24c. Try not to keep looking at it.

You should see some action by 24 hours.

Reply to
briggsbits.co.uk

Whoops, forgot to mention why airation is so important.

Brewing yeast undergoes two process in our brew. First the cells undergo rapid multiplication until there are enough to cope with fermentation. This proces is aerobic. They need warmth, food and oxygen to generate the millions of new cells.

When they have used the disolved oxygen present, they then set about the task of converting the sugar into carbondioxide and alcohol. This process is anaerobic.

Reply to
briggsbits.co.uk

Next time i'll makes sure i pour the water in with some force and hopefully that will give it some good airation.

Btw the brew has finished fermenting and is ready for bottling.

I really would like to experiment with adding some of those little hops bags you just throw in the fermenter ... wonder how they would effect the taste. It seems only the really expensive home brew kits start to get away from that "home brew" taste, but then only just. Would love to get a brew going that was as good as commercial stuff.

Cheers,

Reply to
Fazza

Reply to
Pyreneesmountain

As far as," good" as commercial goes, Id suggest getting the knowledge behind brewing and go all grain. Not to bag on extract but Ive never had one that could compare to an all grain batch.

Dry hopping gives alot of aroma and will give your brew a nice edge. Youll find that most commercial ales ,the best ones, "dry hop". I think its one of those elements that makes a so so beer into something worth drinking.

Heath

Reply to
Heath

As you get into brewing, you will find your homebrews will far surpass any comercial brew you have tasted. Keep trying and as Charlie Papazian says "Relax, don't worry,have a homebrew"............ When you're just getting started in this wonderful hobby, have patience. There are lots of great sites out there and forums to chat on. One of my stand-bys is TastyBrew.com

Reply to
Tikker

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