1st Brew, 1st mistake, advice needed quick!

Ah, so 'bottling bucket' and 'secondary fv' aren't just differnt names for the same thing?

Fil, so we're straight on this: it sounds like you advise against 'racking to secondary' unl;ess there was a good reason to, but you've no objection to syphoning from primary to bottling bucket just before bottling to aid batch priming?

BruinTuns said:

Ah, so 'bottling bucket' and 'secondary fv' aren't just differnt names for the same thing?

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Essentially yes. It's just the time difference that determines the difference. Bottling bucket - beer is in it for less than an hour or so, usually. Secondary - few days to a two or three weeks

BruinTus - hows it going? do you have a tasty brew ready for Christmas?

I left my bottles wrapped up for almost 3 weeks then moved to cold conservatory. Its been another couple of weeks now so had a few samples, I'll be honest Im slightly disappointed

The colour is good and they have carbonated nicely however there is still a slight off taste, difficult to describe, kinda like a raw alcohol. Not as bad as you might think, its still very drinkable! This was much more noticeable when i had a cheeky bottle earlier in the process so im hoping after some more conditioning that it will disappear

Have two new kits on order, have you any experience with brewcraftbeer.com kits?

Cant wait to get started and correct all my 1st brews mistakes!

Hi Greg, nice to hear from you :hat:
Don't worry, you're right about it will improve. That slight 'off' taste you describe sounds typical of an under-conditioned beer. From all I've read, many brews, especially strong ones, can take a long time to reach their best and just two weeks in the cold is nowhere near long enough. In fact, given the Evil Dog high abv I'm surprised yours is as drinkable as it is after such a short time..
If you can be patient I think you'll taste a big improvement over time. Two more weeks and it should be noticeably better, two more months and I reckon you might be amazed.
Obviously I can't speak from personal experience (yet) but this is something I've read over and over, you've probbably read a few similar posts yourself where someone's initial disapppointment has turned to delight after leaving the bottles alone for a while.
In fact one post I came across the chap didn't drink his beer precisely because it was so unenjoyable. So he left it at the back of his garage and forgot about it until one day he was having a clear out and thought he'd give it another try. After six months it had transformed into the best beer he'd ever brewed :drink:
I know how you feel though. I too was hoping mine would be ready for Christmas but I've just resigned myself now to waiting. I take comfort from the fact that hopefully this will be the last Crimbo when I have to buy commercial beer! It will be a while yet but I'll post the verdict on my Evil Dog when it's finally ready..
I've no experience of brewcraftbeer.com kits at all, don't remember even reading a review, though I will now out of interest.
Yes, it's satisfying to correct past mistakes and feel confidence and knowledge growing.
Good luck with exerting your will power over temptation with your conditioning time!

Thirtsy_Greg said:

BruinTus - hows it going? do you have a tasty brew ready for Christmas?

I left my bottles wrapped up for almost 3 weeks then moved to cold conservatory. Its been another couple of weeks now so had a few samples, I'll be honest Im slightly disappointed

The colour is good and they have carbonated nicely however there is still a slight off taste, difficult to describe, kinda like a raw alcohol. Not as bad as you might think, its still very drinkable! This was much more noticeable when i had a cheeky bottle earlier in the process so im hoping after some more conditioning that it will disappear

Have two new kits on order, have you any experience with brewcraftbeer.com kits?

Cant wait to get started and correct all my 1st brews mistakes!

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Hi. I also never use a secondary bucket. I leave my brew for up to six weeks ,then bottle from the bucket which has a tap drilled in it for bottling.I have a:thumb: tube attached which is long enough to reach the bottom of the bottle. I dip the clip and tube in boiling water,then turn the tap upside down and pour boiling water over and in the tap to sterilize before bottling. The raw taste,did you use a lot of sugar?:drunk:

Thirtsy_Greg said:

BruinTus - hows it going? do you have a tasty brew ready for Christmas?

I left my bottles wrapped up for almost 3 weeks then moved to cold conservatory. Its been another couple of weeks now so had a few samples, I'll be honest Im slightly disappointed

The colour is good and they have carbonated nicely however there is still a slight off taste, difficult to describe, kinda like a raw alcohol. Not as bad as you might think, its still very drinkable! This was much more noticeable when i had a cheeky bottle earlier in the process so im hoping after some more conditioning that it will disappear

Have two new kits on order, have you any experience with brewcraftbeer.com kits?

Cant wait to get started and correct all my 1st brews mistakes!

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sounds like you prefer your beer more mature, just factor in a few more weeks in the cool maturing into your brew cycle, its all about personal taste, some folk prefer there beer greener than others..

imho most beers benefit from a good month or more maturing once conditioned, but thats just my taste preference..

Thanks BruinTuns, I read everywhere that patience is the key with homebrew but when the instructions say conditioning should take a week or 2, thats what I went for - I will leave well alone until Feb/March time at the earliest, will perhaps by my birthday brew at end of Match!

Hi Emil, looks like a good set up and very similar to mine. Do you have a second bucket to have two brews on at once? Do you find the sediment gets disturbed bottling from the tap?

Fil, sounds like we share a similar palate! I'll leave for longer and hope for improvements :)

Thirtsy_Greg said:

Thanks BruinTuns, I read everywhere that patience is the key with homebrew but when the instructions say conditioning should take a week or 2, thats what I went for - I will leave well alone until Feb/March time at the earliest, will perhaps by my birthday brew at end of Match!

Hi Emil, looks like a good set up and very similar to mine. Do you have a second bucket to have two brews on at once? Do you find the sediment gets disturbed bottling from the tap?

Fil, sounds like we share a similar palate! I'll leave for longer and hope for improvements :)

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Yep, one of the first lessons with brewing is that the kit timings are way overly optimistic. Kits tell you that after 2 weeks from your day of purchases you will have 40 pints of ready to drink beer, Whilst it is technically possible to do that I suppose it is better to ferment it properly bit of bulk conditiong then condition for a few weeks in the bottle.

Don't worry my 1st brew had a funny off flavour which actually mellowed and was drinkable (although still not great) just learning experience..

Do not let it put you off :drink: learn from each brew even if it is just improving processes!

Covrich, already very excited about second and third brews! Cant wait to get them started after xmas however they are all grain (?) kits so things could go terribly wrong!

Oh dear....

I cracked another bottle tonight after 7 weeks conditioning and I'm sorry to report that it tastes vile, seems to be deteriorating rather than improving.
Very helpful forum member clibit suggested that my low fg might have been a sign of an infected brew, and I fear his warning may have been correct.
After all the first brew mistakes I made with this kit it would have been a miracle if it had turned out great but there was a point where I thought I'd got away with it, and that time would work its magic transformation from 'just about drinkable' to 'DELICIOUS!'
But on the strength of this bottle I reckon I was way over-optimistic.
Hard to describe a taste but best I can do is to say that there's a long, strong, bitter nasty aftertaste. I don't mean a healthy hoppy bitterness, more a horrible 'definitely something wrong' bitterness that lingers in the mouth and makes the teeth feel gritty.
I've read about isolated bottle infections and, just maybe, the others will be ok, but I'm not going to build my hopes up.
Keep you posted.

Sorry to hear that, BT. Fingers crossed it's isolated and not the whole batch.

Sorry to hear that BT. It may be that the delayed start to fermentation was a window for bacterial growth. If you opened the lid a lot then, it wouldn't have helped.

The important thing now is to learn as much as possible. Did anything touch the wort before fermentation got into full swing? Did you sterilise effectively? Did you pitch enough yeast, and did you re-hydrate it correctly? Was your sanitation good during bottling? Did you suck any tubes? etc.

Think through the whole process to work out any possible flaws.

Cheers Brewski. I'll try a few more over the coming week and let you know. Yes, fingers crossed but I've a feeling that something's definitely wrong with this brew. Even before this nasty one the 'ok' samples weren't nearly as nice as other members have described theirs. I hoped it just needed longer conditioning but I think maybe I was kidding myself a bit.


Hi clibit, yes, if the whole batch is bad then as you say all I can do is try to learn from it .
Trouble is that it's hard to remember now every detail of what I did or didn't do that may have caused this, if indeed I did cause it. I wonder if it isn't possible for a kit to be actually already infected before it's even opened.
I'm fairly sure that my sanitation process was thorough as it was my first brew and I was trying to do it by the book.
Yeast was re-hydrated and the kit comes with a bigger than usual packet - 11 grams so should be plenty. I don't think anything touched the wort that wasn't sterilised.
Yes, the fv lid was opened more than it should have been and I may have oxygenated the wort when I transferred half of it into another fv.
Most of this brew is in sterilised glass empties but I also used four 2 litre plastic mineral water bottles and the bad one was one of those.
I confess I didn't bother sterilizing the plastic ones as I really didn't think I needed to because I'd used the water for the brew and screwed the top back on the empty. If that was the cause then maybe the others are ok, but as I say even before this I've had the feeling that this brew just wasn't quite right.
I'll try a few more and if they're all bad I might contact Hambleton Bard. Member Robert_ did that after he got an infected Bad Cat kit and after he sent them a sample it turned out to be a yeast infection.

P.S. I don't mean to be crass when I wonder about the possibility of infection already being in the kit. I realize it's far more likely to be down to me, I was just thinking of all the experienced brewers who've had a bad batch even after meticulous sanitation.

did u ever stand over the open bucket looking down?
if so lord knows what fell off your ead

the pre yeast wort is a big bucket of FOOD! for all sorts of mircolife that floats about in the air, when pitching yeast we add a big enough population (hopefully) of our prefered microlife in the hope it out eats anything else that got in.. Mostly we win.. sometimes we lose cleanliness and sanitation are the best weapons we have..

Yes the air is loaded with bacteria. There is no way you can keep bacteria out of your beer altogether. So you have to minimise it, by keeping it shut, and sterilising well, cooling the wort quickly while covered. And then get the yeast working quickly to outgrow the bacteria population.

Some good tips here for keeping things nice and clean, I'll beat them all in mind for my first brew next week...

Well there's no longer any hope. Since last posting I've tried several more samples and there's no doubt they're getting worse. This is definitely a bad batch, the taste is absolutely horrible.
No idea what might have caused this but it's deeply disappointing. My other two first brews aren't as bad but they also have serious issues. I'll persevere with a couple more attempts and I'll take clinical sanitary precautions. If they turn out like this I'll just give up.

Don't give up for good. I did one years ago and bottled it. Tried it and it was dreadful. Got slightly better but was left with about 30 pints of terrible beer. So binned it and it put me off for years. Had another ago last October and it's turned out amazing this time. So stick at it I'd say! Which kit you done this time?

Shame, its bad luck but it can happen.. thing is the pre yeast bucket of beer is a big bucket of optimum food for anything that falls in it out of the air, or off u ?? when pitching the yeast we hope we are providing a colony of microlife that will out eat and starve out anything nasty or unwanted that got in, generally the numbers are with us and we win, occasionally it wont, unless you can brew in a sterile room you cant eliminate all the risk, just do what you can do,

good news is the probability of 2 bad brews in a row due to an outside influence will be tiny ... so as long as your clean sterile and take sensible precautions rinsing and keeping things covered brew #2 should be a star...:drink: