Very first brew, flat as a pancake.

proost said:

My very first attempt at home brewing, Coopers Original Stout.

12 days in the fermenter at a fairly constant 19.5c in my homemade insulated brew box (stc 1000 controller + Screwfix 60w heater)
3 days gravity reading of 1010.
3 days in the garage at about 7/9c in the original fermenter.
Bottled in Coopers PET bottles with one Coopers carbonation drops per bottle, filled to about 2.5cm to the top.
Left in the spare bedroom at a rough temp. of 18/20c for two weeks in front of the radiator.
Two weeks in the garage at about 7/9c.

Just tried two bottles and they were both completely flat.

Would it be possible to just move them into the warm to maybe start a secondary fermentation or is this very first attempt destined for the sink?

I'm absolutely gutted! I was really looking forward to drinking these. They taste really nice but have no carbonation at all.

Any advice chaps?

Steve (was going to say "Steve, ****** off" but I've got f***k all to drink!)

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ryanshelton said:

did you get any fizz or anything from the bottle?

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micky1882 said:

If it tastes nice why not drink it as it is instead of binning it! Try using a pocket beer engine (calpol syringe) this is what I do.

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LeithR said:

Sorry to hear about your dilema. I have never used carbonation drops, ordinary sugar always works well for me - and its cheaper. From your write up you seem to have done everything correctly.

You do have the option of re-priming your brew using 5g/1L of sugar or 1/2 tsp(2.5g) per pint. As you are using PET bottles you can also squeeze them to see if any of them have taken any conditioning. A fully conditioned PET bottle should be difficult to squeeze, just like a coke bottle when full. This is a simple test for conditioning of any beer/lager. Try a few of your bottles first and see if this has the desired effect.

If you have the space and can afford it you would be advised for future brews to get yourself a bottling bucket set up with a tap on the side at the bottom of the bucket. You can then transfer the beer from the fermenter into the bottling bucket into which first you will have added 115g of sugar for 23L of beer the sugar will have first been boiled in a small amount of water and put into the bottling bucket before syphoning the beer on top of it.d


Good luck with your next steps.

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Slid said:

One of my early mistakes was not tightening up the tops on the PET bottles the Coopers Microbrewery comes with. How I managed to do this, I know not. Repeated the error with another brew as well. Still no explanation for that one either.

So, my first Coopers Stout is still flattish, but it tastes OK, especially with cider.

Maybe you did the same? Either way I wouldn't worry overly - you could always reprime with a half teaspoon of sugar in each bottle if you have a suitable funnel. Would need re-carbonising in the warm, but if you don't like flat beer, it might be worth the pain,

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Slid said:

The calpol syringe is another way of repriming the bottles.

Dissolve the sugar in hot water, suck it up into the syringe, put in each bottle.

(A Calpol Syringe is an engine for dosing up an unwilling child with painkiller.)

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dhendy91 said:

Hi posted a thread like this yesterday. I now think it may be a issue with the carbonation drops as I did my first brew two brews with them, had two weeks at room temp and a week and a bit in the cold and were flat as a pancake. Have had a coopers Irish stout primed with sugar in the bottle for just over a week now and already got some fiz using the same conditions. I have now moved the carbonation drops bottles into an area of the house that gets to 24-25 degrees at night in the hope I get some carbonation as i have been told temperature doesn't have much of an effect on taste during carbination. Will report back the results in a bit.

Don't throw it away though as soon as the outside temp warms up you should get carbonation easier will just mean waiting.

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Slid said:

The calpol syringe is another way of repriming the bottles.

Dissolve the sugar in hot water, suck it up into the syringe, put in each bottle.

(A Calpol Syringe is an engine for dosing up an unwilling child with painkiller.)

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Slid said:

One of my early mistakes was not tightening up the tops on the PET bottles the Coopers Microbrewery comes with. How I managed to do this, I know not. Repeated the error with another brew as well. Still no explanation for that one either.

So, my first Coopers Stout is still flattish, but it tastes OK, especially with cider.

Maybe you did the same? Either way I wouldn't worry overly - you could always reprime with a half teaspoon of sugar in each bottle if you have a suitable funnel. Would need re-carbonising in the warm, but if you don't like flat beer, it might be worth the pain,

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rpt said:

Slid said:

The calpol syringe is another way of repriming the bottles.

Dissolve the sugar in hot water, suck it up into the syringe, put in each bottle.

(A Calpol Syringe is an engine for dosing up an unwilling child with painkiller.)

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Actually the syringe was referred to as a pocket beer engine. A beer engine is a hand pump as used in a pub and if fitted with a sparkler will give your pint a good head. The idea of the syringe is to achieve something similar. Pour the beer into the glass as normal. Suck some beer into the syringe and then squeeze the beer out of the syringe just under the surface of the beer. This will produce a nice head. However, I think it will only work if there is some condition in the beer and won't help completely flat beer.

I can only think of two reasons why you have flat beer. Either the lids were not tight or the carbonation drops didn't dissolve. Another possiblity (OK that's three) is that the yeast has died. But that would only happen if it got very hot (over something like 45C).

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