Fermentation may need to be restarted in the keg...

[DanT]

Hi guys I am asking this one on behalf of a friend...honest! I have never had this problem with my brews so I wanted to check on my advice to him. He has basically tested and found that his fermentation had stopped and remained stable and so kegged the beer. It was fermenting for 2 weeks and has been in the keg for 3 now, he tasted last week and also yesterday and says the beer is very sweet, as though the sugar is still there. I am going round tomorrow to get a fell for it but I suspect he had some **** yeast in the kit. I would reckon he needs to get some fresh yeast from our local brew shop, fast start it in some warm water and tip it in the keg. The problem here being that his kit is bottom of the range. His keg cap just has a rubber bung in it so we have no control over pressure relief. Obviously we want to keep some of the gas in anyway for carbonation (very low at the minute) and pressure, but i don't know if the pressure would just be too much. What do you guys think? By the way he fermented warm, conditioned cool and has now brought it warm again to try kick start it, which didn't work.

Cheers

Dan

 

[DanT]

Nobody? We're still a bit unsure what to do.

Cheers

 

[JamesMcS]

Hi Dan. What's the kit, and what are the starting and finishing gravities?

I would say that if fermentation had definitely stopped, your best bet is to get the brew back in a fermenter with an airlock and repitch the yeast.

I'm not sure what condition the brew will be in though after 3 weeks without a layer of carbon dioxide on it to protect it from nasties. It might be an idea to contact the manufacturer and see what they say, a replacement might be a possibility of your friend was sold a pack of dud yeast.

 

[DanT]

It's the geordie Yorkshire bitter. No other reviews say it's meant to be sweet so we assumed is not meant to be. I think we'll pitch in the keg with half the yeast as we don't want to risk air contamination, thats the first thing I thought of. The taps high enough on the keg to not pull the sediment through.

 

[JamesMcS]

Not sure about pitching in the pressure vessel bud. I don't know how much co2 a fermentation produces, but you're running the risk of a fairly hefty explosion if the keg fails. Plus all that co2 going into solution will make the liquid more acidic which could affect the yeast.

I wouldn't worry about contamination. If fermentation has failed you'll need to oxygenate the wort again anyway, I'd stick with a nice clean fermenter, an airlock and a steady temperature and start from scratch if you want to save it

 

[JamesMcS]

Take a gravity reading before you start as well, then again after a week or 10 days so you can see if fermentation is happening

 

[Duxuk]

What about doing as you say and adding new yeast to body temp. water. Add this to the brew when it has cooled to about 20C. Leave the lid loose so the CO2 can escape and leave it warmish 'til the gravity drops to a stable level, maybe a week or more. Add 80g of sugar to secondary ferment and tighten the cap to allow the CO2 to build up. Leave it another 2 weeks then drink. That bit should be easy enough!

 

[DanT]

We did think of relieving the pressure manually too... so I think we will go with that.