Woodfordes admirals reserve fail??

Monkhouse · Post by **Monkhouse** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:18 pm

Hi everyone, I’ve recently done this kit for the first time after many many amazing Wherry kits. I did the brew as per instructions as it’s my first time doing this one so wanted to see how it came out as standard. I left it in FV for 2 weeks and hydrometer reading told me it was good to go (1.054 down to 1.014). I bottled the beer and sampled it from trial jar whilst bottling and it tastes nasty. It’s hard to explain obviously but basically I’m getting no sweetness just pure bitterness, no other flavours at all it’s just not pleasant one bit. I tried a bottle just today (a week after bottling) and it tastes no different although it is clear and carbonated now.
I know I know it’s very green at this stage but I’ve only got the Wherry to compare to as I’ve not done any other woodfordes kits apart from this one. The Wherry even at this stage has always tasted amazing and only got better from conditioning.
Has this brew gone terribly wrong?? If anyone has done the admirals reserve kit before and had similar results please can you let me know how it turned out? I just can’t really see at all how this beer is going to improve at all. I’m not a beginner with kit brewing at all but this kit has thrown me totally!

LeeH · Post by **LeeH** » Wed Oct 24, 2018 8:33 am

Any nasty niffs?

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Robwalkeragain · Post by **Robwalkeragain** » Wed Oct 24, 2018 10:15 am

I've always found wherry very sweet so with the high abv of this kit that's surprising. Like LeeH says - any sourness, eggy smell or anything you can pick up? If it's exceptionally fruity it might just be estery or green apple acetyldehyde which will calm down in the bottle. Either way it's a 5%+ kit so be prepared for a few weeks wait.

Monkhouse · Post by **Monkhouse** » Wed Oct 24, 2018 11:57 am

I can’t decide if it’s sourness or not tbh, what would sourness indicate? It kind of reminds me of allot of the crappy 1 can kits ive done in the past with a kilo of sugar. No nasty smells at all it doesn’t give off any aroma at all really.
I did notice that the airlock water basically levelled out for about a week before I got round to bottling...
Should I give up hope of this beer turning good?
Should I not have left it in fv for 2 weeks? I’ve always left the Wherry for up to 3 weeks in fv but then that was when the kits only gave a 6g sachet of yeast and now it’s double...

LeeH · Post by **LeeH** » Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:10 pm

The length in the FV is a positive thing even if it was left on the yeast cake. Neither is the double pitch of yeast.

I’d leave it for a month before ditching it, unfortunately I don’t know why it tastes bad.

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Monkhouse · Post by **Monkhouse** » Wed Oct 24, 2018 9:14 pm

Yeah I guess I’ll leave it for a while and wait and see. I’ll be gutted if I have to dump it all it’s meant to be my Xmas brew.
I’ve just put a Wherry on the go tonight as back up, hopefully nothing will go wrong with this

Post by **orlando** » Fri Oct 26, 2018 3:56 pm

Monkhouse wrote: ↑
Wed Oct 24, 2018 11:57 am
I can’t decide if it’s sourness or not tbh, what would sourness indicate?

An infection. Did you notice the surface of the beer before bottling? Did it have a dullness to it? Is there something like a TCP, medicinal type of smell? If the latter it can be due to poor rinsing after sanitation. What did you use for that?

Monkhouse · Post by **Monkhouse** » Fri Oct 26, 2018 4:38 pm

I used brucleans but no way is there a risk of poor rinsing as everything gets rinsed 3 times after I’ve sanitised everything. I didn’t notice any dullness on top of the beer and there’s no medicinal smell- I’ve had that before for sure!

Post by **orlando** » Fri Oct 26, 2018 10:04 pm

That is OK for cleaning but what do you use for subsequent sanitising? How much time and exposure to the atmosphere do the cleaned objects undergo? Once you have rinsed the surfaces are vulnerable to recontamination.

LeeH · Post by **LeeH** » Sat Oct 27, 2018 6:36 am

Get yourself a bottle of star san.

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Monkhouse · Post by **Monkhouse** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 6:28 pm

Sorry to sound stupid here but when I sterilise the bottles I put about 1/8 tsp of brucleans in each bottle and full will hot water- this is how I’ve always done it....here comes the stupid part- how do I sterilise my bottles using starsan?

Post by **orlando** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 6:54 pm

To clarify a little, we clean and then sanitise the cleaned and rinsed surfaces. Sterlity is actually quite hard to achieve and sustain once you have. It is also not completely necessary. Given the environments we work in it is next to impossible to maintain a sterile working environment and as I say not necessary, we just need to keep the background contamination so low that the correct amount of healthy yeast pitched out competes whatever is left. A good sanitising product, Starsan is the one most often cited, is what you use to keep your thoroughly cleaned surfaces in a state ready to accommodate the wort at whatever point in the process. Keeping some in a handy spray bottle means you can quickly sanitise anything that is likely to come in to contact with the wort, from fermentor surfaces to spoons and tubing. If it comes into contact with wort it must be sanitised first.

Monkhouse · Post by **Monkhouse** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 9:35 pm

So I would just clean everything as normal with my brucleans then what? Just spray star san on everything to sanitise then leave it on? Don’t rinse it off? How about the bottles? Just spray some star san into them like one spray?

Meatymc · Post by **Meatymc** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 10:14 pm

Every now and then I have a bottle sanitising session - note sanitising (with star san) not sterilising which is very difficult to do properly unless you have a sterile environment to work in. I did 160 bottles on Sunday using the method below - took me just under 2 hours (and 4 pints of home brew whilst listening to Planet Rock so wasn't exactly intensive

).

You make up a batch of star san - I use an ex dog food bin that holds 20L - and then immerse the bottles in batches for at least 2 minutes - ideally 3 or 4. My 'bin' can take 8 bottles at a time. Lift out and either stand upside down (having santisied the draining board with a spray of your star san mixture) or, if you've got one, use a bottling tree, to drain any excess. You don't need to clean off the star san - it won't hurt your beer.

As already said, get yourself a spray bottle and liberally dose everything you intend to use at all stages during your process - equipment, surfaces etc.

One word of caution, if, like me, you simply stand the bottles upside down, be very, very careful when you're near them - 40 bottles (max on my draining board) make a hell of a racket if you accidently knock one and start a domino effect!!

Monkhouse · Post by **Monkhouse** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 11:41 pm

Cheers this is really helpful!
My kitchen sink is a large butler sink, could I mix my starsan solution up in that and submerge the bottles for 5 minutes using this sink? I bet it could hold about 15-20 bottles easily. If I bleached the sink first to make sure it’s as clean as possible before I filled it with starsan?

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