I think my brew has died! Help!?

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ClownPrince

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I've got a Wherry on the go at the moment, but I think it's died/stalled.
There was some pressure in the bubbler a couple of days after I started the brew, but it never actually started bubbling, then I leaned on the Vat, it bubbled a little and all the pressure dropped (balanced water in the bubbler).
I think the brew may be dead.

Will it be worthwhile trying to restart it by siphoning it into a fresh vat and adding new yeast or should I just abandon the brew?

It's been approx 10 days since brew day. I used both cans of a Wherry kit and 1KG of sugar so it should have been brewing for a couple of weeks at least.
 
It's probably finished fermenting at ten days.Check your gravity reading with a hydrometer which should probably be around 1.012/1.010 then again in two or three days and if it has transfer to a secondary for another two weeks to let the yeast clean up then bottle.
Can leave feeling anxious but try not to panic and exercise patience which will become invaluable when brewing...

Sent from my ALE-L21 using Tapatalk
 
Both cans and 1kg of sugar is a lot of fermentable sugar for 6g sachet of kit yeast to deal with. What was your OG reading and what's your SG reading now? If it's hardly moved then warm it up to 22c, give it a good stir/whisk and chuck in a pack of Wilko Gervin yeast (I'm presuming you got it from Wilko, they're doing the best deal on Wherry's at the moment) and fit a blow off tube. Your hydrometer readings will be your best indication of what's happening in the FV. A lack of airlock activity doesn't always show what's going on, I recently brewed a Coopers Stout with 1kg BE,70g of dark brown sugar OG:1060. I threw in a pack of S05, fitted a blow tube and went and hid behind the sofa.......and nothing, nada. To the point where 3 days later I took an SG reading getting ready to rescue it, it had gone down to 1016. Post your readings and we'll take it from there.
 
I was thinking of getting a Wherries kit but I see on this forum that a lot of people get stuck fermentations with it. But plenty of people say it's a good brew. Is it worth it? The answer seems to be to add more yeast. But surely if the yeast is chewing on lots of sugar then it will rapidly multiply?
 
I was thinking of getting a Wherries kit but I see on this forum that a lot of people get stuck fermentations with it. But plenty of people say it's a good brew. Is it worth it? The answer seems to be to add more yeast. But surely if the yeast is chewing on lots of sugar then it will rapidly multiply?

I have made 4 or 5 Wherry kits and none of them have stuck. To be fair, I only used the kit yeast with the first one as I didn't know any better. After that I used 11g packs of either S-04 or Wilko's gervin yeast or used 2 packs of Wherry kit yeast. If the manufacturer is now supplying with larger yeast packs, then there should be no problem
 
You need to treat your yeast kindly. Don't just chuck it in; rehydrate it first. You just need about 200ml of boiled water, cooled to 35-37C for most ale yeasts. Adding the yeast at this temperature can leave you with twice as many active yeast cell than you'll get by adding it at fermentation temp. Once it's rehydrated you can then just chuck it in. It should get going quickly. For those of a nervous disposition you can leave it to cool naturally to fermentation temperature but I've never noticed a difference in the 2 techniques.
 
You need a hydrometer
Says the man that always forgets to take a starting gravity
We forgive you :whistle:
Unless you are doing AG and are interested in mash efficiency, you don't really need the OG, although you do need the FG to confirm that its finished.
And further after you have a few brews under your belt you know roughly what the strength of your beer is going to be based on what went into the wort. Does it really matter if the ABV is only 'about 4.5' rather than 4.4587?
 
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