Finally got my London Pride extract clone on the go!

This was my first effort using steeping grain plus extract. Pretty straightforward, the steeping seemed to extract loads of malt (though I havent a clue really) and the black malt gave it loads of colour, smelt great. Sorta sparged by running lots of water through the grain and letting it trickle out, added to the boil. Boil took ages to get rolling but was fine, fun adding the 4 hop varieties.

Gravity spot on at 1042, used WLP002 liquid yeast which seemed to have solidified in the vial a bit, so gave it a good shake and hopefully all ok.

Pitched a bit cool at 17c (was expecting the opposite problem), I think the tap water was really cold, and I had chilled the wort a bit in the bath. It'll warm up though.

3 hours+ this took me so I hope the brew will be a good one. Fun times!

Can't decide whether to bottle or barrel...

wlp 002 is that English ale? if it is watch out it doesn't get stuck around 1.020. Good luck with the brew

Garethhuwwilliams said:

Can't decide whether to bottle or barrel...

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Do half and half.

I usually do that, in the main to ensure that I don't drink it all in one go, as the bottles go in a crate in the garage and get forgotten about. But those type of ales are better barrelled IMHO, I'm just drinking BrewUK's Dark Star Festival out of the remaining bottles and I preferred it out of the barrel before Xmas. I only tend to prefer stronger beers or lagers from bottles.

A mate did London Pride as his Xmas brew and it was cracking.

You want a temperature of 18-20 for WLP002, try to keep it in that range.

The understairs cupboard where I have it is usually pretty constant between 18 and 20 but the cold night last night chilled it out a bit. I've chucked a mini radiator into the cupboard with it for a bit and it's showing some signs off life now.

Think I'm going to barrel it. I've got no way to cool my two kegs so I want to get them filled (other is conditioning a wherry) and drunk before it gets too warm out, and keep all my bottles for summer style beers. Also if I half fill it I'm 20 pints down on capacity! Limited for space so got to maximise it!

Also on balance I think the lighter hoppier beers are better bottled for a light fizz, and the English style bitters better from tap. Each to their own though!

Arggggh. The good lady turned off my heater on Thursday without telling me, stuck at 1020. Grrr. put heater on last night and no sign of action this morning so given it a stir...v annoying. Esp with Wales losing last night made a bad start to the weekend.

Hope you get it going, I don't like brewing this time of year due to the low household temps, my FV's been sat next to the woodburner with a sleeping bad around it at night. Suggest getting it as warm as possible.

My BrewUK Exmoor Gold has been in the FV 20 days 'cos I haven't had time to move it, last night committed the cardinal sin of having a few pints straight out of the FV as it had cleared completely, it was gorgeous if a little flat.

How vigorous a stir should it get? I gave it a good swirl (avoiding aerating it) but should I get some of the yeast cake shifted off the bottom?

Also what's typical length of time to expect it to get going again? It's at 22c now if the stick on thermometer is to be believed, but showing no signs...

You just want to give it a gentle stir to get the yeast back in suspension, - so gently stir up the trub from the bottom.

If nothing happens in the next day or so chuck some yeast nutrient in there

Wilco sells nutrient doesnt it? Don't have a lhbs sadly

Yup, for the princely sum of a quid

Good luck, but I'd be pessimistic about adding yeast nutrient at this late stage: nutrient boosts the yeast, but if it's stuck the yeast has stopped. I always add nutrient at the start this time of year, when it's cold, seems to help a little. But good luck anyway - I've never managed to re-start a stuck brew

Hmm. Think it might be a non starter, still no life. I've added 6g more yeast from a wherry kit as a last ditch effort. Stirring , heating etc had no effect so far.

It's about 1018 from 1042 which gives about 3% abv. Worth keeping? Or likely to be v sweet?

Really annoyed about this.

Off topic: My bad weekend was also compounded by not noticing that my daughter hadn't shut her car door when I started reversing and it hit a tree, nearly took the whole door off. That's gonna be several hundred quid. GRRRRR

If you've got airlock on it, If it's not bubbling and that's what your looking out for, doesn't necessarily mean it's not started up again. I wouldn't dump it, just bottle it and see how it turns out.

Edit: Just thinking out loud here as I'm not entirely sure on this but, If you do bottle it, if you dont add any priming sugar the yeast should use the 'stuck sugars' are priming sugar and take the gravity down a point or two more - anyone got any input on this

I was wondering about priming, it's going into a PB. However if it's stuck surely it's stuck wherever I put it, so will need to prime to get things going?

The airlock is pretty reliable, seems to be airtight and blob away even when the fermentation has slowed to a blub every five mins, which is why I'm sure this is now stuck. You might be right though, especially as I've now taken the lid off a few times. I'm going to give it another week though and hopefully it'll budge a bit more.

Again thinking out loud:

You've stirred, added more yeast & nutrient and still nothing Yeast need food (wort) and oxygen to multiply and ferment your beer. There's obviously enough food as the fermentation is stuck. So what about oxygen. May be there's not enough oxygen in the wort so thats why it's stuck.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere about re-aerating wort during the fermentation. So googling, I discovered that with high gravity wort it is at times advisable to re-aerate during the fermentation process. However there seems to be a window of opportunity for doing this. I didn't read enough to find out for definate but it seems that it is anything from 24hrs - 5 days.

Whilst reading I also came across the fact that yeast use all the oxygen in the wort in the first day or so. So you adding more yeast may not do anything as there is no oxygen left in the wort , as the first lot of yeast has consumed it all.

However, as an extremely high risk strategy you could possibly re-aereate to may be get the second lot of yeast going. Now of course you will probably oxidise your beer. But I think oxidisation of beer takes a bit of time to happen so if you were to drink the beer quickly, once conditioned for a short amount of time you may have drunk it all by the time it oxidises.

Like I say I'm just thinking out loud here and I'm not really suggesting you re-aerate. However If you want to 'take one for the forum' and have a bit of an experimentation, I'm sure there would be plenty of people interested in the results

Ha! To be honest I can't see this ending well no matter what. Lack of oxygen did occur to me but it's the fact that the heater went off and knocked it out that seems too much of a coincidence.

Don't have not her fv or I could have split it, aerated one and seen what happened to each batch.

Think I'll just leave it alone, check gravity in a few days, barrel and hope for the best...

Also thinking aloud - when you keg and prime with sugar, even after brews are done at 1010 or so, they get going again a little. So why not try this in the FV, nothing to lose: dissolve 100g of sugar in a little warm water, chuck it in the FV, and give it a stir: might be enough to get it moving? Have heard of this working before.

I've had a couple of stuck brews, one in particular turned out really quite nice but needed to be left for a good 2 months, I think it was still fermenting, just very, very slowly. So don't give up: out of 63 brews I've only had one bad one.

I've just stuck another BrewUK kit on - Exe Valley Spring Ale - I don't normally bother with yeast nutrient as the yeast with these kits is good, but I added a little nutrient this time, as it's so cold.

Darrell that makes sense (to me at least). Might give that a go, I've got some brewing sugar, or do you reckon something fully fermentable, like white granulated?

I don't think it matters, any sugar should do, but get the temp up as well and hopefully this dual approach will get it shifting again.