First brew - Assuming disaster

[zlehmann]

Hey everyone! Excited to be part of the community. I got my first brewing kit for Christmas (actually a while before Christmas) and I just bottled it. I have a couple questions I was hoping you guys could help me out with.

1. The beer is very very cloudy and smells almost like cider. Is that typical after two weeks of fermenting? I'm only doing a 1 gallon batch. I'm hoping the next two weeks in the bottle will help with that smell?

2. I read about some troubles siphoning so practiced a few times on a pot of water. I got it working with no problem at all. But I could not for the life of me get that thing to work for more than a few seconds on the beer. It seemed to me that the carbonation in the beer was creating air pockets in the siphon tube and causing some serious problems. I ended up having to very very slowly pour from my priming bucket to the bottles. Not ideal but I had no other way of getting the beer to the bottles.

Any help is appreciated! Looking forward to a batch that isn't terrible!

 

[chossy]

You used a kit and you are only doing one gallon.... that's not much at all.. I think you have too much sugar in this batch I have never really seen any 1 gallon kits but I'm from the UK so maybe it's not something we see in our home brew shops.

 

[InLimbo]

What was the recipe? What yeast did you use? What temperature did you ferment at?

Welcome to the hobby!

 

[RM-MN]

A cidery smell is probably acetaldehyde, an intermediate product of fermentation which might mean that you kept the fermenter too cool for too long and the yeast never got to the point where they would clean it up. The other possibility is that your recipe used too much sugar which is reported to give a cider odor.

For bottling a dedicated bottling bucket is really nice because it has a spigot at the bottom. Couple that with a bottling wand that is attached to the spigot with a short piece of vinyl tubing and you won't have any problems with bottling.

 

[zlehmann]

I did a little bit of reading on general trouble shooting for beer making from John Palmer's book and I think I had an infection of Aceto bacteria. I have the cidery smell, jelly strands, and lots of cloudiness. Important part is figuring out how it happened. I think there was some step I may have missed where I add more water to the fermenter because my was only a little more than half way full so there was a lot of air in the fermenter.

Can this lead to infection like this? It's an airborne bacteria from what I read so I'm assuming exposure during the cool-down and time in the fermenter lead to this problem.


Still doesn't explain why I couldn't siphon to save my life!!

 

[RM-MN]

Acetobacter require oxygen to live. That's why we don't get that vinegar formation in the primary, because there is a blanket of CO2 over our beer. Racking it to secondary still isn't a problem if we don't leave much space above the beer (fill carboy clear up to the neck) because the dissolved CO2 will offgas enough to fill this little space but if leave too much space above the beer, there may be enough oxygen for acetobacter to start. Acetobacter eats alcohol so it won't be growing until you have fermentation.

If you added water later in the ferment, that could carry enough oxygen in for something to start but I doubt it could get very far. That may be where you are though. I just don't have enough experience to help you any more. One thing that people mention, if you have an acetobacter infection, it will always get more vinegary while acetaldehyde will gradually get better until it is gone. For now your route to make sure which it is will simply be to let it sit longer. If it gets better, bottle it. If it gets worse, you have malt vinegar to use in cooking. Lots of it.

 

[zlehmann]

I'm picking up another quick batch of materials for another 1 gallon batch. Hopefully lessons learned can be applied.

 

[zlehmann]

For what it's worth to those starting out I thought I would post a reply with my second batch so far. I filled the carboy up properly this time. To the point where it blew the airlock off, so had to switch to a blowoff tube for a while. But fermentation looks good, no off smells yet. Pretty sure the excess air in the carboy was the main culprit last time.

 

[TexasWine]

For what it's worth to those starting out I thought I would post a reply with my second batch so far. I filled the carboy up properly this time. To the point where it blew the airlock off, so had to switch to a blowoff tube for a while. But fermentation looks good, no off smells yet. Pretty sure the excess air in the carboy was the main culprit last time.

Keep in mind that it's completely acceptable, even recommended, to have lots of head space in the primary fermenter. Many folks use 6.5 gallon carboys for 5 gallon batches. You don't need to fill it up to the neck in primary.

 

[DeeEnvy]

2. I read about some troubles siphoning so practiced a few times on a pot of water. I got it working with no problem at all. But I could not for the life of me get that thing to work for more than a few seconds on the beer. It seemed to me that the carbonation in the beer was creating air pockets in the siphon tube and causing some serious problems. I ended up having to very very slowly pour from my priming bucket to the bottles. Not ideal but I had no other way of getting the beer to the bottles.

IMHO no amount of carbonation in beer will be enough to break a good siphon flow.
You may have an air leak in the line somewhere.
Either in the line itself or where the plastic hose is joined to the racking tube.
Maybe your receiving vessel wasn't low enough to continue the flow.
Just a couple thoughts.