Muntons Gold range

[Craig]

I just finished a Muntons Gold Continental lager. This is the first brew i have made in the 20years i have been doing it, that I haven't put sugar in the fermentation process. I put the same amount of priming sugar I alway put in my brews, which always turn out fine. However this one didnt it was completely flat. Has anyone else had this problem with the gold range?

[MrC]

I've never used one personally but a mate of mine brewed one about a year ago and it carbonated just fine.

In my experience, for a beer to be completely flat there are only a couple of potential culprits.
1. The bottles didn't seal
2. The yeast was dead
3. You inadvertantly screwed up the priming even tough you'd swear black & blue that you didn't.

My guess would be number 2, dead yeast.
Did fermentation seem ok with plently of bubbling?
Did fermentation complete, what was the FG?
Did the temp get too high at some stage (above 30c) ?

[MrC]

Oh, and by the way. Welcome to RealBeer and good on you for moving away from Kit & Kilo brewing, your beer will be a hell of a lot better for it.

If you haven't already found it, you should check out www.howtobrew.com, it's a life changer!

[Craig]

The fermentation did seem a little strange compared to what I am used to. After doing kits with 1K of dextrose for so many year in a heat box, the fermentation is always about the same. But I just thought it must be because i'm using malt and not dextrose. The fermentation didnt seem to start for days then it didn't seem to finish for about two weeks.
By the way could you recommend to me what kit, process you use? ie, what brand and do you use malt or dextrose?
Thanks

[jt]

I've made a couple and they were good. Never had any problem with them carbonating ... but I sometimes have issues with the few that I do bottle and I think it's a lack of priming sugar.

Also, did you condition the bottles warm Ceaig, do they just need a little longer ?

[Craig]

Yes I have a thermostatic controlled fridge and when I put the brew into bottles I put it back in there until the bottles are hard then move them into a colder area. it usually takes 3 days for the bottles to start to go hard, but with this one they were in there for 2 weeks and the pressure only increased slightly.

[Craig]

Can you tell me what you use for priming? I always use two carbination drops into each 750ml bottle. My only concern with this is they dont state the ingredients on the package so I dont know if they are made of glucose or sucrose. I dont want to really use sucrose.

[jt]

I primed with table sugar
How does it taste - apart from flat ?
I'd be surprised if the yeast has died on you - if it's just fermented the beer ok

[Craig]

It tasted ok. I was a little disappointed. It still has that home brew after taste, but I guess you can never get rid of that? I read some info saying it was the sugar that caused that taste, thats why I wanted to try a malt only brew.

[James P]

Change the yeast and the temperature you are fermenting at.

17~18C I find is a good range to reduce the "home brew" esters in the crap yeast range.

If you use S05 at 18C then the yeasty flavour is greatly reduced if you increase the temperature to 24C for a day, then crash cool it on gelatin to remove excessive yeast / haze

[Craig]

Ive always used the yeast that comes with the kits, so can you tell me what the SO5 is? Thanks for your help

[JoKing]

It's a strain of yeast that you can purchase from most homebrew shops. It is similar to a couple of high quality liquid strains that cost around 4 times as much. It is sourced from a very well known US brewery.

If you walk into a brewcraft homebrew shop and ask for "SafAle US-05" they'll know exactly what you are talking about.

You can add it to the brew in exactly the some way you would with the yeast that comes with the kit. When / if you choose to use this strain of yeast, you DO NOT need to use the packet that comes with the kit.

Your resulting beer should improve instantly.

[Craig]

Ill do that. Thanks for all that!