Help, 3 brews failed

[orlando]

I'd also add that I have a rooted dislike of immersion heaters - ESPECIALLY if yours are actually going into the brew.

The answer to this question is crucial. Never put a heater in the brew, far too difficult to properly sanitise, impossible to sterilise. The latter is what you should make anything coming in contact with the brew at this time. Don't go anywhere near it for the first 3 days, this time is what is needed for the yeast to get ahead of competitors, and leave for approx 2 weeks. Any hydrometer samples taken should be thrown away, not worth risking 5 gallons for 100 ml putting it back.

[Wonkydonkey]

I was going to reply last nite, but I got a bit wobbly eyed. So I get up and find all these replies.

I think the answer you need is in this thread somewhere, but as I was going to say last night, you need to know the process your doing, and ask the right question. To get the right answer.
There is a saying, " KISS" keep it simple stupid. And I don't think you are,

The key point is, you have brewed good before, it's the last 3 that have failed, so you must be skipping/missing out/overlooking somthing.

As others have said, do you have a tap on the FV? Take it off and make sure it's clean aroun the threads.
There is always a slight smell from empty FV, that's why we clean then sanitise.
Your wasting loads of cleaning stuff. Just make enough to wash around with cloth that you only use for brewing. Onced washed rinse twice. And don't sanitize to early, and don't put any heater in the brew.
I live in brighton, and my brews are in the airing cupboard, it's about 16-18C. The yeast are slower but it gets there.
Companies want to sell kits, the way they sell it is by stating the quickest time, I'm sure you have seen advertisements saying shop is 5min off junction 10 etc. and when you go there it takes twice as long, they must have timed it in the middle of the night and all traffic lights were green, see what I mean ?

Trust me, if you read around, understand the process your doing from start to finish, you will make good beer, with no infections cos you have don it before

Ps, as a last resort, there must be a good YouTube vid out there that someone can point you too . so you can watch how simply others do it.
Wonky

I hope this helps you find the bits that your missing

Edit: PPS I use washing up liquid, but that's only after I have fermented a brew and I want to clean the crap out of the FV, it's the the first thing that's to hand. As with all scented cleaners, we don't want any purfume in the brew so It gets rinsed and left to dry. But the next time I brew, I wash it with oxi then starsan.

[Manngold]

You learn something new every day.

In future I will just get the Oxi from £land, and then star san!

[Fil]

I also think you may be fermenting too warm, have you checked the heater your using set at a target temp in a jug of water and then measuerd the water temp after a few hours..

as long as your not pitching cold i would forgo any active heating and just wrap the bucket up in a sleeping bag to insulate it and retain some of the heat generated by the yeast activity.. investing in a good thermometer is worth while tho its easy to test any thermometers with an ice water solution for circa 0C and boiling water for circa 100C check online for detailed proportions of ice/water etc...

with temp control over the fermentation i always set a target temp at the lower end of the published range of comfort for the yeast, iirc its fussels that can get generated when fermenting the bulk of sugars at higher temps which can add character to some beers but also add strong flavours to beer generally.

sour does sound like an infection, Sory i got to ask, You dont scour four fv's with a scrubby? and I dont suppose you stand over the open bucket puzzled scrathing your head by any chance?? - didnt think so after reading the cleaning and sanitation regime outlined in post 1 WOW i thought i was ocd cleaning and sanitising with oxi/starsan on the way into a brew and on the way out for storage

BY all means boil the whole kit, but a strong 10-12l solution will be enough imho, and adding cold water from the tap should be fine, when you pitch your yeast your adding a huge population of microlife thats going to out eat anything else that may have got in via the water after surviving the chlorine

you cant brew sterile beer with only yeast living in it, the thing is to have more yeast than anything else so everything but yeast gets starved off before it gets established;)

edit ** also you seem to be going thru the starsan at a rate, try applying it with a trigger spray bottle, 1l should last a few brews then,,

[Happy brewer]

wow so many replies, thank you all.
I use a refractometer to check the gravity, I do sometimes use a trail jar and hydrometer, and I do dump the test amount.
I try to pitch the yeast at around 24c, to allow it to wake up more and start to work quicker to reduce the lag time.
As for the star san I have bought a bottle of distilled water from work, and mixed a batch up in a clear spray bottle, and will use that next time.

The box I made, which is a pine wooden frame (I will have to get some photo's), is 45cm (17.1/2 inch) square or as close as is possible, by 72cm (28 inch) high, which give me a space of around4.5cm (1.3/4 inch) clearance all around for the bucket and roughly 8cm (3.1/4 inch) height to give for the airlock, I have put a layer of cardboard on the outside and inside, sandwiched between the gap on the cardboard I have put a load of bubble wrap, then on the inside I have put a layer of the radiator foil on each side, and overlapped each side to it makes it heat tight I guess, on the base I have put 2 layers of the radiator foil, again overlapped onto the sides, the lid I built up with cardboard to make it tight fitting with a layer of the radiator foil inside, so it looks like the inside of a fridge. I had a spare piece of the foil left, and wrapped that around the bucket, and my mom suggested putting some old sheets around it to insulate it more, but I thought that would be to much.

but seeing what some of you say about leaving out the heater, do you think this is more than enough, as my room rarely goes below 18, at a push on really cold nights it might drop to 15, but rarely.
as I said before space it a premium and this box fits in the space nicely where as a small fridge might be to big, I could be wrong of course , the box is not to big, and is big enough to hold the bucket with out excess space around the bucket.
I did think of maybe buying one of those builders rubber buckets for the rubble and rubbish, put that in and fill that with water then the heater, as some have suggested, heat the brew with a water bath as it where , but I don't think I would have enough space in the box for this idea.

oh and also I spray star san onto the inside of the box, a very light coating to make sure it is clean inside as well, before putting the bucket in

[gobuchul]

I am still a newbie at all this but I think you may be fermenting too warm.

25 litres of wort is quite thermally stable, it takes quite a lot of energy to heat up and takes quite a long time to cool.

Also, heat is generated from the fermentation, so if the room temperature is an average of 18C, the wort will be probably stay at about 20C inside the insulated box.

However, if you also heat it , it will probably get too warm and you are getting some off flavours.

Were the successful brews done before you built the box?

[Happy brewer]

yes all 3 where done before I got the heater and made the box, the box was really made due to the really cold weather we had in November and December

my room dropped down to 13c some nights, so decided a insulated box was better than nothing, as with the abdji it did drop to 14c the one night and after that it kind of went downhill fast, from smelling great and active to kind of dead and smelling bad

[brewnaboinne]

+1 " heat is generated from the fermentation"
I don't know how accurate the thermostats are on those heaters, are you checking the temp with a decent thermometer?
Last week I did a brew in room at 15C pitched yeast starter at 22C initially the temp dropped but when it got back up to 22C ( once the yeast was really working) I took the insulation off the FV. And it was only a thin cot duvet....fortunately the child no longer lives in a cot!
So perhaps you need to get rid of some of the insulation and turn the thermstat down to ,say, 18C.

[gobuchul]

Get a thermometer and check the temperature of the brew.

You only need it to be about 20C. I would guess with that ambient temperature and the insulation you don't need any heating at all.

[orlando]

Tight fermentation control is very desirable. Many brewers will tell you that being able to do this contributed to the biggest leap in the quality of their beer. Yeast is very sensitive to temperature change, even 2c change can affect their activity and the results are expressed in the final flavour. Heat stress (hot or cold) will give your beer flavours that can make all the difference to your appreciation. A fridge that has a tube heater and a controller like an STC 1000 is something that can help provide that quality control, everything else is just too random. In the Summer you are going to have even bigger problems but this time in keeping things cool. Unless of course you are only interested in making Saisons.

[rpt]

I use a refractometer to check the gravity, I do sometimes use a trail jar and hydrometer, and I do dump the test amount.

Refractometers aren't reliable once fermentation has started as the ethanol will affect the readings. There are corrections you can do but I don't know how accurate they are.

I try to pitch the yeast at around 24c, to allow it to wake up more and start to work quicker to reduce the lag time.

That's too warm to be pitching yeast. For most yeasts that's the top end of what's safe and as the fermentation will generate heat you could very quickly be generating fusel alcohols. There's no point reducing the lag time if it makes the beer taste off.

[rpt]

Any hydrometer samples taken should be thrown away

No, they should be drunk. Purely for quality control purposes.

[minesapint]

I have drunk a few yeasty hydrometer samples in the past and each time it went through me like a sports car.
I just leave the hydrometer sitting in the fermenter right from the start. You don't waste any brew that way.
Also have one of those stick on strip thermometers on the side of the fermenter, less chance of introducing infections compared to a glass thermometer being dipped in now and again. They are not very accurate but they give a good indication.
Not worried about getting the exact reading with the hydrometer , eye level readings etc. , just a good estimate of when to rack into a closed Kingkeg for the final fermenting and clearing before I bottle the brew.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned it already but it is a good idea to resist temptation and just leave the lid shut for a few days once you know the fermentation has kicked off. Each time you take a peek in there you have another chance of getting an infection in there.
Cheers and good luck.

[daf]

Any hydrometer samples taken should be thrown away

No, they should be drunk. Purely for quality control purposes.

+1

[Happy brewer]

have bought a new wide neck fermentor 25L from wilko, made from HDPE not PP as the buckets are, i tasted some of the kilner that i had on the go, and it tastes like beer, but it stuck at 1.020, only around 2% anyhoo smells ok, no sour acidic smells noted. am thinking as you all said the temperature was the error., also i noticed the buckets i have got, have got some nice tram lines from how the buckets are stored in shop, so i think that this could also have been a factor in the failure of my brews.

will let you know what happens