Looking to see where I have gone wrong...

[CPThomson]

Hi Folks!

Just wondering if some more tenured brewers could help me with a bit of feedback here. I attempted my first all-grain brew over the weekend (albeit quite clumsily) with the following ingredients:

BIAB method

1kg Pilsener Malt
500g Flaked Barley
1kg Flaked Oat (some of this was porridge oat, but reliable sources have told me this is fine)

25g Azacca
25g Simcoe

S-33 yeast

7 litre strike, 60 minute mash, over-sparged to about 13L (with an average sparge method at best).

Boil took forever on my electric hob (about 90 minutes to even approach 100 degrees), post boil volume about 9L, OG of 1.040. Quite a lot of bits from the grain that I could not filter out, went into the fermenter.

Pitched yeast and airlocked. Small activity over the first night, switched airlocks, went completely dead. My bucket contains no significant leaks in the seal. Attempted a gravity reading today, absolutely no signs of activity in the fermenter, funky yeast smell. 6-7 hours of my saturday poured down the bathtub sink.

Any suggestions as to why? Low volume? Wrong yeast? Over-diluted? Everything was Star-Sanned before anyone asks. But any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Taking another run this weekend, but look forward to hearing any feedback!

Cheers

 

[MickDundee]

My first thought is you’ve been far too hasty and shouldn’t have poured it out!

You only brewed it on Saturday and it’s only Monday today, that’s barely 48hrs! I’ve not used S33 before but there are plenty of yeasts that can take 24-48hrs to get get going, some MJ yeasts can take 3 days before any noticeable activity (I’m talking Krausen etc here, I generally ignore my airlocks because it’s not a reliable method of monitoring fermentation). Did you rehydrate the yeast or just sprinkle on top? Did you pitch a whole pack in your 9L or did you only use part of a pack? All of these can have a baring on how quickly you see activity.

How do you know there are no leaks in the FV. Both FV kids and Airlocks holes/grommets can leak and your beer can be fermenting away happily without issue. Lack of bubbles doesn’t equal a problem, and I’d hazard a guess that your “funky yeast smell” is probably the yeast starting to create CO2 in the bucket.

 

[AnimatedGIF]

I'm not a tenured brewer I'm afraid, but in my limited experience I have learnt the following:

• A great deal of choice of homebrewing methods come down to personal preference, with two big exceptions
• Sanitization - you need to do this, and you have
• Patience - this is not down to personal preference - it is a requirement.

I'd say you've been rather too hasty in throwing it down the drain. I imagine it will be hard for those with more experience than I to help as there's no way of knowing what would have happened on, say, day 5 for example.

Why did you switch airlocks? Airlocks are not a good proxy for fermentation activity.

 

[CPThomson]

The thing is that it started the evening of, and then stopped. Way too soon for me to think it a natural progression (though having said that, S-3 may do that).

Really did not mind pouring it out anyway, as it was nothing like the recipe I had conceived - was aiming for about 10 litres at approx 1.055, ended up with 8/9 at 1.040 (nothing that is is due to a poor attempt at sparging, mixed with using my electro-hob, which took about 90 minutes to bring 13L of 60/70 degree wort to a boil.

I feel as though air-tightness can be easily confirmed by just softly pressing on the top? (using a blow-off tube that immediately blows out bubble0 when this is dones). correct me if i am wrong, i am defo not a tenured home brewer just yet!

 

[CPThomson]

My immediate reaction was that a low sugar wort at a very low volume in a 23L fermenter with a full yeast packet had somehow killed/starved the yeast after only 36 hours.

 

[MickDundee]

The thing is that it started the evening of, and then stopped. Way too soon for me to think it a natural progression (though having said that, S-3 may do that).

It either didn’t stop or never really started. Either gas was escaping out of somewhere other than the airlock, or the initial bubbling wasn’t actually the start of fermentation but was caused by something else.

Recipes not turning out as originally intended is half the fun of starting out with brewing. Your lower than expected OG will have been due to the volume of unmalted adjuncts you used - 60% of the grainbill is an awful lot and it will have been a combination of the pilsner malt not having enough diastatic power to convert the unmalted adjuncts completely and the volume of its creating a stick mash/sparge. It won’t have killed the yeast though.

 

[CPThomson]

Oh well! I was likely a little too hasty, this much is true! (I also had a small concern that the high oat-malt ratio MAY have been an issue).

Trying again in a few days with a more malt-focussed grain bill, and a better sparging method so I will let you know how its turns out!

Cheers.

 

[CPThomson]

One more thing, whilst I have some good advisors circling the thread... do you think a propane camping stove would bring a faster boil than an electric hob? I just ask because as my wort was coming to boil (EVER so slowly) I clearly lost more than 1 litre. Thanks.

 

[Dave Parry]

I switched from electric to butane about 5 brews ago (just done Brew #50) and won't look back. I still use electric for the HLT as I can put it on a timer so it warms up before I get up. The kettle is much quicker up to the boil with gas and I can control it more finely to keep it on a rolling boil without over doing it. The size of the burner probably helps though! (for scale, that's a 70L pot).

 

[Banbeer]

You didn't mention that you cooled the wort to pitching temp before adding the yeast, did you?