Argh, more first time trouble.

I posted a really long paragraph the first time out so im gonna keep this shorter and cleaner.

I've been trying to brew a festabrew double oatmeal stout. Followed the directions and screwed up left and right. my fermentation stopped, and i added more yeast, it started for twenty minutes and stopped again.

So i've been letting it sit trying to see if the sg will drop from its 1.02 reading. However today i got home and the sg went UP to 1.03, so i can only imagine that i must have an infection or something is terriblly wrong to make it go back up when its been sitting not doing anything.

Should i chuck this batch and try anew or is there any hope me. I actually took some and bottled it last night, one bottle that is, and opened it tonight just for kicks, and it tasted like carbonated beer. In fact it was quite tolerable. But now im too worried to continue on without getting some advice first.
THANKS!
-guy who has learned to control his paraghing skills.

recheck your reading - i don't think it is possible for a reading to go up without adding more fermentables.
if the beer you bottled for one day was carbonated it means you still have major fermentation going(or did you prime it?)
either way to get bubbles with only 1 day in the bottle you must still be fermenting strongly.

i would check your hydrometer??? never heard of sg increasing! i think you really need to be more patient with the beer. also make sure you are sanitizing correctly. i have no idea what i would do with that batch, maybe just chaulk it up to a lesson learned and move on...good luck on the next one.

The only thing I can think of that would make your s.g. go up:

1, Not degassing your sample. Put the sample in, let it sit for a long while, stirring it until most of the gas is gone. Then float the hydrometer in it, and take the reading. co2 makes the hydrometer float higher, and gives you false (high) readings.

2. Temperature changes- make sure the temp of your sample is 60 degrees (or whatever your hydrometer is calibrated for), and adjust it if the temp. is different.

3. What makes you think it isn't fermenting? You say it started for 20 minutes, then stopped again? I don't know how you can tell that. That could have just been outgassing of co2- if it was fermenting, the s.g. would drop a bit.

Do NOT bottle any more until fermentation has completely stopped. If it carbed up in just one day, you WILL have bottle bombs and someone could get hurt. (Not to mention you'd lose all that beer!)

Most of all, don't worry. The beer will be fine- I promise. We'll help!

Edit- I just noticed that my post count is now 1234- how cool is that! I should have posted something more special for this occasion!

Well this really is a comedy of idiocy, i just checked my hydrometer and of course i read the wrong side, its still at 1.020, but its been at 1.020 for at least 3 days now. My fermentation stopped in three days and has been holding at 1.020 ever since.

I did prime the bottle with sugar last night which i forgot to mention. Should i bottle now or add more yeast or set my beer free?

What was the o.g. and the yeast you used?

Being as i am mentally slow i forgot to take an O.G. The first packet of yeast was safbrew s-33, when i didnt think it was going to start fermenting i added a 1/4 packet of windsor brewing yeast and stirred it in which caused an eruption of foam.

After about 2 and 1/2 days of crazy bubbles, i got nothing. On closer inspection with a flashlight, i find super super tiny bubbles still popping up somewhat regularly. So at least for now i have calmed myself down. If i hadn't looked with a flashlight i would have never of noticed. maybe my beer has a few days left to finish fermenting.

marvec said:

I posted a really long paragraph the first time out so im gonna keep this shorter and cleaner.

I've been trying to brew a festabrew double oatmeal stout. Followed the directions and screwed up left and right. my fermentation stopped, and i added more yeast, it started for twenty minutes and stopped again.

So i've been letting it sit trying to see if the sg will drop from its 1.02 reading. However today i got home and the sg went UP to 1.03, so i can only imagine that i must have an infection or something is terriblly wrong to make it go back up when its been sitting not doing anything.

Should i chuck this batch and try anew or is there any hope me. I actually took some and bottled it last night, one bottle that is, and opened it tonight just for kicks, and it tasted like carbonated beer. In fact it was quite tolerable. But now im too worried to continue on without getting some advice first.
THANKS!
-guy who has learned to control his paraghing skills.

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I'm only 2 batches in, so i'm fairly new as well. I had a problem with taking hydrometer readings. I've found that they can vary pretty heavily depending on the depth and what not. I typically stir things up before a reading to try and even out the liquid. It's possible that both the 1.02 and 1.03 were misreadings. Maybe you're around 1.025 or so.

From the research i've done, everyone says that you should NEVER dump a batch of beer. A lot of people get new-to-brew jitters and think of starting new due to small hiccups which just don't pan out. My first batch started with a low SG and didn't appear to ferment through. Drinking it a month later in bottles it's actually pretty good. I think my hydrometer testing skills were the issue. Not the beer.

Well, if you post your recipe we can help you calculate your og. And see how close you are to being done.

At this point, don't do anything else! Step away from the beer and put down your hydrometer and no one gets hurt :cross:

Keep it at 68-70 degrees and keep it airlocked and I think you'll be ok.

My recipe was simple, i took the advice of the man at the beer store and used festa brew, which basically lets you skip everything up until fermenting. You get your wort in a big thick plastic bag and poor it into your sanitized bucket and sprinkle your yeast on top and let it go.

I boiled a cup of water as according the instructions and then added the yeast, i wasnt really paying attention as i was excited and poured the yeast into water that had only cooled for a minute so it was still very hot. I poured cool water in to bring down the temp and then just dumped it into the bucket, this was around 6pm.

Next morning(7am) nothing had happened and i figured i had boiled my yeast to death. So i got more yeast and came home to find it was fermenting. And because im dumb instead of letting it go, i put a quarter of the new package in cause i figured i must have killed some of the yeast.

This lead to massive head eruption, followed by furious fermenting. That was friday, by sunday it had stopped, so i freaked out and poured the rest of the yeast in. it bubbled and looked good for a half an hour and then it stopped.

When i look really closely with my flashlight i can see really small bubbles popping up, so i guess its still fermenting, which makes me very happy

I am using the festa brew double oatmeal stout, which says the final og should be between 1.004 and 1.019. Tomorow will be exactly seven days since i first added my yeast, so im hoping to bottle tomorow or friday.

Yooper Chick said:

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At this point, don't do anything else! Step away from the beer and put down your hydrometer and no one gets hurt :cross:

Click to expand...

I'd say that's your best advice right there. Also 7 days and completely done, that seems really fast to me, but hey I'm new also what do I know.

Because of all of the issues, leave it in your fermentor for another week. Put it away in a closet and leave it alone, don't even look at it until a week from now. My stout is three weeks old now, spent 2 weeks in the primary, fermenting, it finished at 1.017. The recipe sayes it will finish between 1.004 and 1.019? That is a HUGE range!
You need to learn to just brew it and forget it for a couple weeks, all of that "interaction" with the brew is not good for it. #1 opening the fermentor and letting O2 in there, #2 stirring it during fermentation... let it go, relax, let it sit for another week, then play with it again.

If you're only doing primary fermentation (putting it in the fermenter, then bottling straight afterwards), you'll need more than 7 days in the fermenter. You'll only see bubbles for the first few days, but just because the airlock isn't bubbling doesn't mean you're not fermenting. You should leave it alone in the fermenter for at least 10-12 days, then make sure the SG hasn't changed for at least three days. Then it'll be safe to bottle. But I can almost guarantee you that your beer won't taste as good (and might result in bottle bombs) if you bottle after only 7 days, especially after dumping in the extra yeast. Patience is the name of the game here--I think your beer will be okay, but let it sit, and you'll have better beer.

Patience has never been a virtue of mine, but i will wait. I'll keep updating my progress.

Sounds to me like your beer is going to be........





JUST FINE! Relax, and dont worry. The key to beer is time. If your worried about leaving your beer in the primary for a long time, and scared of autolysis, then dont worry, I have only heard about 1 case and thats because the guy left the beer in his fermenter for 6 months!! so dont worry about it, time can only make your beer better. A double oatmeal stout I think you said it was? well, malty / complex beers like oatmeal additives and stouts need a lot of time to reach their peak, im talking 1-2 weeks primary, 2 weeks minimum secondary and then another 3-4 months at least in bottles. Home brewing is about time and effort put in the time, and put in the effort and you will produce a beer of exceptional quality! But the most important lesson of brewing, is to just relax!