Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Well I just dumped my first complete failure.

A few weeks ago I brewed a recipe for holiday beer. The OG was 1.064 and everything during the brew went as expected. I used Windsor dry yeast which was a first for me. Ferment went as expected, except when I took a sample a 2 weeks the gravity only got down to 1.023-1.024. I warmed it up a bit and tried to rouse the yeast with no apparent result.

I have another beer coming along so I thought I'd just wait for it to finish and then throw the holiday beer on that yeast cake (US-05) this weekend to see if it would kick up again and finish fermenting. However, Monday it started bubbling again on it's own and formed a slight krausen. I thought, this could either be good or really bad.

Well it stopped bubbling yesterday and seemed done with whatever it was doing so I took another sample today. It dropped to 1.017, but tasted alcoholic and generally pretty bad.

I figured my options were to either wait a few more days to make sure the gravity is stable, then bottle and hope it ages out or dump it. I decided on the latter.

Total bummer.

Oh, Randy, your breaking my heart!! Those english ale yeasts can taste a little raw right away but if you had time before serving it to family this holiday it probably would have gotten better. Always wait 2-4 weeks and re check the flavors. Bummer though man.

John,
I hear you on the raw flavor. But this beer had already been in the carboy for a month. If it was a barley wine that would have been one thing, but with an OG of only 1.064, I don't think it was a conditioning issue. It tasted a little infected, with all sorts of phenols, medicinals, and metalic flavors. If it hadn't magically started fermenting again after over 2 weeks at a stable FG I might not have worried as much.

Plus, I didn't want to wait any longer because it was taking up a carboy and I needed to brew another batch.

Thanks for the concern and sympathy though. I managed to force myself through the grief process by ordering a kegging setup.

Cool, sounds good Randy. Good luck with the kegging. I have a set-up with 4 kegs and works pretty slick. If you're getting used kegs make sure you do a 24 soak with PBW and scrub the inside if you can before you start using it. Also replace all o-rings before first use. When you're ready for a beer gun, let me know and I'll walk you through the bottling process.

On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:24 PM, johnnyik <brew-brewing@crbeernuts.org (brew-brewing@crbeernuts.org)> wrote:

If you're getting used kegs make sure you do a 24 soak with PBW and scrub the inside if you can before you start using it.

Clean is good.  I didn't do quite a good enough job on a used keg once, and used it for cider.  It was great for the first couple weeks.  Then it suddenly started getting a liquorice/wintergreen undertone.  Seems I missed some dried rootbeer somewhere in the keg.  It wasn't bad, just a bit odd.


-Jim 

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