Failed batch number 2

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titletowngirl

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We've been brewing for about a year, 5 batches. 2 really good brews, but the last two have not been good! I'm frustrated! The last batch took over two days to start fermenting and ended up with a "chemical" taste. We would like to try a yeast starter for our upcoming batch. Does anyone have any helpful hints or words of encouragement?!
 
Are you doing extract or all grain?

What's your process like?

Are you aerating enough before pitching, or perhaps not enough yeast, which a starter would help ( like you said )

How old are the beers that taste like chemical? Perhaps theyre still green ?

Don't get discouraged, bad batches happen.
 
Extract brewing

I think I'm stirring yeast vigorously. Using large spoon and stirring for about a minute after pitching.

Primary for two weeks. Secondary for three weeks. Bottle conditioned for 3 weeks. It was a warm winter ale kit from northern brewer.
 
titletowngirl said:
We've been brewing for about a year, 5 batches. 2 really good brews, but the last two have not been good! I'm frustrated! The last batch took over two days to start fermenting and ended up with a "chemical" taste. We would like to try a yeast starter for our upcoming batch. Does anyone have any helpful hints or words of encouragement?!

http://morebeer.com/content/homebrew-off-flavors

Have you looked there or a similar site?
 
Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize...and resist the urge to peek into the primary in order to check for progress. That can introduce nasties into the wort. I've had many beers take a while to get started, only to turn out fine. I just recently had one that never caused te airlock to bubble. I assumed I was screwed. After about 1.5 weeks, took a hydrometer reading and it was all good. Just let it be...

A starter is a good way to go, but patience is a virtue as a beginning brewer.
 
I'm assuming your producing ales? How consistent are your temperature around your fermenters. From personal experience I think 3 weeks in the secondary is a lot of time, without the vigorous fermentation producing co2 to push out the oxygen, that's a long time to leave your beer in the secondary. Leaving it in the primary for 1wk-1mo then xfer to a secondary for a week max IMHO. This is just what I've discovered about my setups. Take it with a grain of salt I've only brewed 50gallons
 
. From personal experience I think 3 weeks in the secondary is a lot of time, without the vigorous fermentation producing co2 to push out the oxygen, that's a long time to leave your beer in the secondary.

I don't know that I agree with that. Search around and you'll see HBT'ers who have had beer sit in secondary for a year. The co2 doesn't need to continuously be pushing oxygen out of the fermenter. Remember, airlock activity is not a sign of active fermentation. co2 is more dense than oxygen and therefore, even when fermentation isn't rolling along as vigorously as it does in the first few days, it sits as a nice little "co2 blanket" ontop of your beer when its in the fermenter which protects it from oxidation even if there is not enough co2 to fill the entire head space of the fermentation vessel.

OP, are you brewing from kits? Making up recipes? following recipes that you find online? Just curious what you have and have not had success with.

Also, (and I'm going open a HBT can of worms with this one) have you considered skipping secondary all together and letting fermentation complete its course all in primary?

Lastly... Stirring the yeast in with a spoon? That just sounds like more more step for possible contamination to me... I simply pour my yeast directly on top of my wort and let it do its thing.
 
When you say "chemical" I am tending to think plastic/medicinal/bandaid/clove. This is likely caused by chlorinated water. It especially seems to take effect if you are doing all grain or even using steeping grains. But it also happens to all extract brews. If you are using tap water, I would highly suggest purchasing a water filter for your brewing water. You should be doing that anyway, to make the tastiest beers.
 
To aerate you need to introduce a lot of oxygen. If you are using a bucket put the lid on, tip it up on its edge and shake the bejeebers out of it for a few minutes. You cannot over do it.

Don't do this after fermentation has begun. Oxygen at this point is bad.

You can stir in the yeast with a spoon but this will not aerate enough by itself. Also make sure you thoroughly sanitize anything that touches the beer after the boil.
 
I am brewing from kits.

I was stirring to aerate wort prior to pitching the yeast. Do I not need to do that?

What I do is, before pitching the yeast I cover the airlock hole on the fermenter (a piece of sanitized aluminum foil wrapped around the airlock stopper works well for this) pick up the bucket or carboy and shake the living hell out of the thing for a few minutes. It gets exhausting but it works well. After you've shaken until you can't shake anymore, remove the stopper, discard the foil and pitch your yeast directly ontop of your wort. If you want, you can give the fermenter a gentle swirl to help drop the yeast into solution but you don't necessarily have to. Even with ready-to-pitch dry yeast, I have had no problems simply sprinkling the yeast ontop of or the wort and not worrying about anything else.
 
kh54s10 said:
Don't do this after fermentation has begun. Oxygen at this point is bad.

Not completely true. I actually will usually oxygenate a second time when I start seeing activity. You just don't want to introduce oxygen when the yeast activity is winding down. And you don't want to try to oxygenate when it's at high krausen ;)

WLP099 recommends it even

[quote ="Whitelabs"]
a. Aerate very heavily, 4 times as much as with a normal gravity beer. Less oxygen dissolves into solution at high gravity. Aerate intermittently during first 5 days of fermentation (30sec-1min).
[/quote]
 
Honestly, the simple answer here might well be that you still have "green beer". I just pulled the brewing instructions from Northern Brewer and this beer is a monster. A beer that is 8% ABV likely just needs more time to condition in the bottle. The bigger the beer, the longer it takes to age. I know that the NB instructions say to bottle condition for 2 weeks but that just seems way too short to me. Two weeks is about the minimal time you would want to bottle condition something about half the size of this beer. Its tough, but let it condition a bit longer. Open a new bottle once a week or so and take some tasting notes and see how the flavors change over time. I'm willing to bet anything that if you sit on this for another month it will have improved tenfold. Whatever you do... DON'T DUMP IT!!
 
NBs instructions are notoriously poor. It says 2 weeks in the bottle before "enjoy!" whether it's a Mild or Lord Fatbottom.
 
Fid thank you for the information, as I said I am also relatively new and have a lot to learn as well. OP best of luck I'm tapped out haha
 
chinkson said:
I'm assuming your producing ales? How consistent are your temperature around your fermenters. From personal experience I think 3 weeks in the secondary is a lot of time, without the vigorous fermentation producing co2 to push out the oxygen, that's a long time to leave your beer in the secondary. Leaving it in the primary for 1wk-1mo then xfer to a secondary for a week max IMHO. This is just what I've discovered about my setups. Take it with a grain of salt I've only brewed 50gallons

Yea so this isn't right. the slight fermentation or CO2 release from the transfer to the secondary ( making the big assumption of a properly sized secondary with minimal headspace) will push out all of the air out of the headspace and replace it with CO2. As long as you keep the airlock in place and properly filled the cO2 can protect the beer for a long time.
 
Draken said:
Yea so this isn't right. the slight fermentation or CO2 release from the transfer to the secondary ( making the big assumption of a properly sized secondary with minimal headspace) will push out all of the air out of the headspace and replace it with CO2. As long as you keep the airlock in place and properly filled the cO2 can protect the beer for a long time.

Already corrected by fid. Appreciate the info tho
 
Alright, so here's my new suggestion.

Put your beer in a dark corner.
Buy this.
Read the whole thing.
Brew another batch of beer.
Read this again while enjoying your Winter Warmer.
Buy This.

Brew another batch of beer.
Read this while enjoying your second beer.

Brew another batch of beer.
Read this again.

Theres alot of info in brewing books and, for me at least, alot of that info didn't make sense until I had practical knowledge to apply/compare it to. A cycle of reading, brewing, and rereading really helped me feel more comfortable with the whole brewing process when I was starting out and made me realize why I was doing what I was doing rather than just doing because the instructions said so.

Last piece of advice... Watch out for Trippel's after a 12 hour day at work :drunk:
 
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If you are using city water from the tap it is possible that the water department changed its method of chlorination from adding chlorine to adding chloramine. Chlorine will evaporate but chloramine will not which would give you a medicine taste to your beer. Call the water department and ask.
 
What are your gravities?

I aerate by pouring back and forth between buckets.

I make a little non-starter. I reconstitute the yeast in warm water with a teaspoon of sugar for 45 minutes, and then pitch it with an arc motion of my hand. I don't stir it. If there are some more concentrated pocket I think it gets them finding each other and reproducing/working faster. They WILL get to all the wort.

My wife doesn't care for the higher alcohol content of my beers. I start with higher original gravity and end with "normal" gravity. It has a alcohol taste like brandy. ...that is kind of chemically.
 
Thank you all for your advice. I'll give it more time to condition. If it's still not good I'll just use it for my beer brats!
 
do a starter, it will do leagues for the finished product. aerate by shaking the bucket or get some type of setup. definately try to control the temp of the fermentation some how and kick up the temp at the end of fermentation. also unless it needs to age for months before bottling, screw the secondary, period, it just gives you another chance to infect the beer and the longer and the longer the beer is on the yeast the more the yeast will clean the beer up for you......on sanitation, what are you using? stay awau from bleach etc.... I like star san as it leaves no taste. good luck.
 
I have not had any problems with using GB water right out of the tap. I would suggest traying and mastering lighter bodied beers, try SAF 04 with a some LME and DME, hop to taste.
 
To aerate you need to introduce a lot of oxygen. If you are using a bucket put the lid on, tip it up on its edge and shake the bejeebers out of it for a few minutes. You cannot over do it.

Don't do this after fermentation has begun. Oxygen at this point is bad.

You can stir in the yeast with a spoon but this will not aerate enough by itself. Also make sure you thoroughly sanitize anything that touches the beer after the boil.

Shaking... such a silly thing to do. Why waste so much energy?

Simply take your stainless pasta strainer from the kitchen, and stick it in your brew pot right near the end of the boil to kill anything living on it. Then set it on your already-sanitized fermenting bucket while you cool your wort.

Wort cool? Good. Now dump that sucker through the strainer into your fermenter. The strainer will catch all the hops and gunk that are floating around in there - whirlpooling is also for suckers.

Once it's in the fermenter, rinse out your strainer, spray some star san on it, and then pour the wort back and forth from the fermenter to the kettle and back to the fermenter (all through the strainer) until is all nice and bubbly and mixed up. Then toss in your yeast, put the lid on 'er, and forget about it for 3 weeks.

Aeration complete. Shaking a 5 gallon container is for fools. Or, just use an aquarium pump and forget about all of this altogether.
 
Shaking... such a silly thing to do. Why waste so much energy?

Simply take your stainless pasta strainer from the kitchen, and stick it in your brew pot right near the end of the boil to kill anything living on it. Then set it on your already-sanitized fermenting bucket while you cool your wort.

Wort cool? Good. Now dump that sucker through the strainer into your fermenter. The strainer will catch all the hops and gunk that are floating around in there - whirlpooling is also for suckers.

Once it's in the fermenter, rinse out your strainer, spray some star san on it, and then pour the wort back and forth from the fermenter to the kettle and back to the fermenter (all through the strainer) until is all nice and bubbly and mixed up. Then toss in your yeast, put the lid on 'er, and forget about it for 3 weeks.

Aeration complete. Shaking a 5 gallon container is for fools. Or, just use an aquarium pump and forget about all of this altogether.

That sounds like too much work for me. :)

I have no way of comparing which method is best but I seem to be having success with my method which is to stir the crap out of the wort for 2-3 minutes using a 28" mash paddle and my drill.
 
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