Beer kits keep failing!

[Toredan]

Results are in:

1.018 on the stuck beer kit after MyQul's experiment. Moved .002 so did actually work but guessing the new yeast colony died off. Anyway, racked it today and it tastes like pure vinegar so seems like it's picked up an acetobacter infection. That's unfortunate. Cracked open the Wherry and the SG read 1.013 after two weeks so racked it off to a secondary ready for bottling and it too tastes like lovely lovely vinegar. Frustration is not the word. Now to track down the source of the infection and try again I suppose. :)

 

[chewie]

Your not having much luck Toredan, if you are sterilising everything 100% the next most likely source of vinegary beer is probably infected air ingress. If every bottle of your wherry tastes like vinegar then look to your secondary racking and bottling procedures. Batch of coopers irish stout that i've almost finished drinking had 1 bottle that was vinegary, i put this down to either not 100% airtight bottle or the bottle not 100% sanitised. One thing i do is to keep windows closed when mixing, racking, bottling, just takes one fly to land on a spoon, lid, hydrometer and a whole batch can be ruined. I also wash and sterilise everything after use and before i use it again with hot water, temperature will help kill a lot of bugs, a couple of extra quid being spent on cleaning is nothing to flushing multiple £10-20 kits.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Toredan do you use your mouth on the syphon tube, if yes read this - http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=51684

 

[Toredan]

Interesting post and yes, I am guilty of sucking to start a siphon Will be amending my procedure accordingly I think. For now however I just ordered 2x 30 bottle winekits (based on Chippy's recommendation) from Tesco's to use up my vouchers. Was tempted with another Wherry but will give these a go first I think.