No longer an AG virgin

[des]

Nice one Jonty, new to this myself, put brew 4 in yesterday. Main lesson I learned so far is to keep an eye on boiler lid, mine blew off and 32 liters became 23 liters along with a sticky mess. (this was with brew number 3). If your wondering why I had a lid on the boiler I was venting through CFC to sterilise it. must pay attention.
Brew 1 was good but its all been drunk now. used recipe from http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/recipe.htm for Bitter.
Brew 2 will be started on tonight

[JontyP]

You must boil with the lid off or partially off. Unpleasant tasting bitter compounds which would normally evaporate condense on the lid and drip back into the wort. I've had to ditch a batch because of this. It was heart breaking.

I'm staring heartbreak in the face at the moment.

After a cracking start, (SG fell from from 1040 to 1024 in first 48 hours) I think the fermentation has stuck.

I initially aerated the bitter wort by splashing from the CFC into the FV, but not through a sieve, neither did I rouse the beer.

After 48 hours in the FV I skimmed the yeast head and racked off beer into a sterilised secondary FV from about an inch of clean yeasty sediment.

It's been at SG 1020 for over 12 hrs, not many signs of life in it - could this be due to lack of yeast, oxygen or both??

I pitched another sachet of Safale-04 in today and gave it a good stir. Fingers crossed.

Any suggestions?

[JontyP]

This should suffice although the seive or other additional methods would have been preferable.

Will use a seive next time.

The problem with dropping is you reduce the viable yeast significantly, some yeasts will be more suited to this method than others. It's an unnecessary practice (although still done by some commercials tpo be fair), I wouldn't bother with it myself though.

Will do next brew in one FV.

The problem now is youre pitching yeast into an acidic alcoholic beer low in nutrients. It may help to make a little starter with about a pint or so of that beer just so the yeast can adapt before pitching it.

Yes, I understand. I'll leave it overnight & see if I can resurrect it in the morning, somehow. I have spray malt, but no more yeast.

Thanks for the tips.

[des]

You must boil with the lid off or partially off. Unpleasant tasting bitter compounds which would normally evaporate condense on the lid and drip back into the wort. I've had to ditch a batch because of this. It was heart breaking.

Thanks for that Daab, will leave lid off in future. did do with most recent brew actually, all went well and I felt much safer when near the boiler as it wasnt jumping about so much!

I flush CFC with mains water after use, is it reasonable to sterilise CFC with a few jugs of boiling hot wort, recycled to the boiler immediately after turning off and before allowing to stand for 20 mins to settle before cooling? or is there a better way?