Has my beer gone bad?

[Michael]

Hi

Sunday afternoon I put on a batch of Coopers Dark Brown Ale. I added brewing adjunct, and some more hops. (In the tea bag.) I did not check the OG.

By Monday morning, the brew was bubbling wildly! Every second another burst of beautiful smelling beer burped its way out. However, by Tuesday, there was no more bubbling, and I think I know why.

I had the fermenter wrapped up in a sleeping bag, and on a heating pad. I did this because I saw the weather said it was going to be around 0 pretty much early in the week, and I did not want my batch to die. Evidently, I may have killed it the other way. The fermenter was easily around 30 degrees.

So, today (Thursday), I decided what the heck, go ahead and bottle it and see what happened. The SG if I am reading it correctly is 1020.

Do you think it finished brewing completely? There is a nice cake of yeast on the bottom of the fermenter. Do you think it is going to taste like a bad nightmare, and cause awful hangovers?

Cheers!

[Michael]

Thanks guys...This is what I have done since I last received advice...

I replaced the gasket on the lid of the fermenter.
I replaced the bung, as it was a bit dry rotted.
I took the temperature, and it was actually around 25.
Hydrometer did not look like it moved much since Thursday night.
There appeared to be a good bit of 'krausen'
I stirred the batch and added another sachet of yeast. (US-05)

I moved the fermenter mostly off of the heat pad. Now only half of it is on the pad, and the other half is supported by a piece of wood. The room is generally about 8 at night and 12 in the day. so it seems the pad is needed, but not to the point it was heating. Too bad the wife won't let me keep it in the lounge. :)

I will check for bubbling tomorrow, and take an SG reading a couple days later.

Once again, thank you folks!

[Dan]

You can use different sized spacers between the heatpad and the fermenter to get the temperature you want, it depends on the room temp, the yeast activity and the heat pad your using, 3 or 4 old floppy discs spread out on the pad in between the fermentor usually give me 18-21oC on my heat pad and keeps the temp constant (at this time of the year).

[RopenutS]

Hello.

Im a newbie, but wanna start gettin into this pretty seriously i guess. I started a brew that ive now left for 7 weeks in the fermentor cos i thought it was ruined but i just wanted to see what would happen. But now i pour some out it doesnt seem so bad. Im just wondering is 7 weeks way too long and would this affect it badly? I used a Saflager 23 yeast and it has remained at 12 - 14 degress pretty consistently. Any help would be wicked

Cheers

[Christian]

7 weeks doesn't sound too long for a lager but it depends if your fermenter is plastic or glass. After that length in plastic it is likely that some oxidation has occured but if it tastes OK then who cares?

I just did my first lager about 6 weeks ago (using S-23) - bought a glass carboy specially so I could leave it for several weeks to do it's things and not worry about oxidation. It's currently finishing off in the bottle - tastes pretty reasonable but has some flaws.

[RopenutS]

Hey thanks for the help. Im just gonna go ahead and bottle half of the batch and see how it comes out in a few weeks. I dont wanna do the whole lot cos im sure its kinda dodgey haha. I'll see how it turns out anyway

Cheers

[denimglen]

The two main things you'll have to worry about are oxidation and autolysis, neither of which should be to big of a problem.

Autolysis is when the yeast cells die and explode open, and give a meaty, vegemite type aroma and flavour - that's basically what vegemite is anyway - dead yeast.

Oxidation is just that, gives a sherry or cardboard type aroma.

Neither of these will make you sick or anything, so if tastes good - drink it!

[Christian]

There's a lot of differing advice on Lagering - I tried to keep things relatively simple for my first go - I did a write-up on my blog: http://hefevice.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/my-first-lager/

[RopenutS]

Cheers fellas. I bottles most of it last night. After the first bottle it came out crystal clear and tasted all good! I was stoked cos i thought it had turned bad. When i was taking gravity readings it was real cloudy and in the first coulpe of weeks it had a real bad eggy smell coming off it. But last night it was mint

[Christian]

The sulfur is typical of Lagers. They tend to take a few weeks to clean up and condition to drinkability. Mine is taking forever to clear in the bottles - maybe due to dry hopping.

[Michael]

My Bitter has been in the plastic fermenter now for 8 days.

At this point I need to decide whether to bottle it this weekend, or let it stay in for another 15 days. (I am going out of country for a bit.)

Do you think leaving it in the plastic fermenter for an additional 15 days would ruin the flavour any?

[Michael]

Thank you.

Hopefully the same is true for an Ale.

[vdog]

It'll be fine. I generally leave mine for two weeks in plastic fermenters, but have done longer - you're looking at a total of just over 3 weeks, which isn't a problem. There's plenty of people who use plastic and leave it in the fermenter for 4 weeks as a standard and don't see any issues with the resulting beer.