Dead Wherry? :(

[TRXnMe]

OK, I think I miht have 'killed' my keg of wherry

I syphoned it off aout 4 weeks ago and left it in the keg, waited patiently until tonight when I've pulled the first pint. It tastes OK at first, but the after taste is horrible, sort of chemical, and 'burning' on the tongue and back of the throat. I'm currently gargling with squash to try and get shot of the taste

Is it contaminated with summat, or is it just 'young' and still in need of maturing in the keg?

I've a nasty idea it's knackered, but don't want to chuck 20 odd quid down the drain without having someone with more nouse than me tell it's not going to get any better.

I've no idea how it got contaminated, the keg was washed out, rinsed with a bleach solution and left for 24 hours, then rinsed with a sodium metabisulphite solution before fillinng it with my wherry.

I removed the tap and cleaned it before the bleach and neutralise phase, but put it back in the keg and left it in situ while bleaching and neutralising, could that be where I went wrong?

Gutted, it's my third brew and the first two can kit, it tasted gorgeous when I syphoned it off as well

 

[fbsf]

Can you spare the keg for a few weeks? If so, I would leave it just to see what happens. If nothing much has happened within a month, then it might be a goner. But I wouldn't do anything hasty unless you need the keg for another brew.

Edit - just re-read your post. It's not possible that the bit you tried still had bleach in it from the tap is it? Maybe draw off half a pint, bin it, then taste the next bit that comes out.

Failing that, what strength Metabisulphite solution did you use? and did you rinse the bleach out before rinsing with the MBS?

 

[stonegrey]

i've only done wherry once, it was a christmas present.

i don't have the luxury of a barrel, i just bottle mine, in either 1 pint glass or 2 litre pop bottles, i left it for a few weeks before drinking, and it came out very good.

would the taste you have be a antiseptic/tcp/root beer taste?

kind of guessing that your beer may have become infected in the keg, possibly due to using bleach to sanitise it, and you may have missed a patch in the keg when rinsing out. I've never used bleach to sterilise, i've always used youngs steriliser, as it came with my brewbuddy kit. I've only had one truely bad brew, which turned out to be a chlorine infection, cause by the local water authority chlorine flushing the mains after replacing them.

 

[TRXnMe]

Can you spare the keg for a few weeks? If so, I would leave it just to see what happens. If nothing much has happened within a month, then it might be a goner. But I wouldn't do anything hasty unless you need the keg for another brew.

Edit - just re-read your post. It's not possible that the bit you tried still had bleach in it from the tap is it? Maybe draw off half a pint, bin it, then taste the next bit that comes out.

Failing that, what strength Metabisulphite solution did you use? and did you rinse the bleach out before rinsing with the MBS?

I can spare the keg for a few more weeks, sadly it's the only one that's any where near ready for drinking though

I purged the tap with Metabisulphite solution after the bleacch soak, also had a half pint out of it yesterday that looked horrible and cloudy (yeast seems to settles in the tap for some reason or other).

The Metabisulphite solution was at 3 heaped teaspoon full (about 8 grammes each) to 5 litres of warm water. I rinsed the worst of the bleach foam out before chcuking the metabisulphite in, but not all of. I'm usig the bleach and metabisulphite combo as one kills all, the other neutralises and makes safe for the beer, or so I thought :)

I'm praying it's not my sanitise routine as I've got more kegs maturing cleaned with the same method.

 

[TRXnMe]

i've only done wherry once, it was a christmas present.

i don't have the luxury of a barrel, i just bottle mine, in either 1 pint glass or 2 litre pop bottles, i left it for a few weeks before drinking, and it came out very good.

would the taste you have be a antiseptic/tcp/root beer taste?

kind of guessing that your beer may have become infected in the keg, possibly due to using bleach to sanitise it, and you may have missed a patch in the keg when rinsing out. I've never used bleach to sterilise, i've always used youngs steriliser, as it came with my brewbuddy kit. I've only had one truely bad brew, which turned out to be a chlorine infection, cause by the local water authority chlorine flushing the mains after replacing them.

Having seen the thread about Asda Videne I'm going to be getting some of that and my metabisulphite will either go in the back of theh cupboard, or get used for killing weeds after that.

 

[anthonyUK]

That is a lot of metabisulphite.
You used a thin bleach right at a dilution rate of more than 100:1?
One Camden tab - less than a teaspoon is enough to treat 20 gallons of water so I think you are over doing it and I'm not hopeful for the rest of your batch.

 

[Moley]

That is a LOT of metabisulphite, a level 5ml teaspoonful is equivalent to 10 Campden tablets, so I hope you rinsed your keg very thoroughly afterwards.


Give your beer a bit more time though, I've only ever brewed one Wherry and nearly threw it down the sink at 3 months because of a fairly unpleasant aftertaste, but it was acceptable at 5-6 months.

 

[TRXnMe]

OK, I was working on percentages, weight of metabisulphite and weight of water, 24 to 5,000 (24 grammes to 5,000 grammes) which came out at 0.48%, didn't seem like a lot

My wife works at Asda and she's asking whether they can get me some Videne in, from what I've read on here recently it looks like a much better option than metabisulphite for my purposes.

As it's a 'no rinse' solution, I didn't rinse the keg out

My tale of woe continues as well, I went to check the other keg I've got maturing, a top tap keg, and the ruddy tap is blocked :cry: I checked it when I got it and it ran fine, but with te beer in there it's not lettingn me have a more than a drop

If I syphon the beer out into a keg with a working tap, am I going to ruin that brew as well?

 

[anthonyUK]

For sanitising a teaspoon of bleach per gallon of water is adequate which is over 300:1.

Bleach or other chlorine based sanitisers are fine when used correctly and the most cost effective. Personally I would never trust a no-rinse chemical.
I would always rinse for the time it takes.

It is possible that with the residual meta left you may have killed off the secondary ferment.
Any carbonation?

 

[TRXnMe]

There wan't much in the wherry, fortunately the other keg was well pressurised, it just had a kink in the pipe from the float to the tap It's now safe in a new barrle with a quick whiff of CO2 from my canister in to replace the lost stuff from the original barrel.

I'll be using a bit less bleach in future then.

Since my last post I've had every empty bit of kit I posess in the kitchen, emptied it of Metabisulphite (I leave a weak solution, well, what I thought was a weak solution, in them and swish it around every now and then to keep them clean) and rinsed them with boiling water, emptied that out, put the lid back and shoved some CO2 in the pressure kegs to slow down any nasties. I know CO2 wont stop stray yeast, but it'll slow down most other stuff.

I've had succes with my first three brews, all drunk, and had probably become too confident.

Thanks for the feedback, I at least know what not to do when I transfer the two berws currently fermenting :)