And the Sarson's award goes to...

Thought that was Martin Clunes....as for hair..we got 5 cats...it's gotta be in my beer!

divrack said:

that was always my thinking until the evil bug of death visited my abode.
this fooker will spring up out of nowhere and kill even a fully fermented barley wine with no o2.
honestly, with brewing everything is super cool until it isn't

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Most of my beers over-attenuate and the most likely reason I can think of is that I use only high attenuating yeasts - US 05, S 04 (perhaps less so) and MJ M31 (which goes down to 1.003).
This sort of started when I first did Saison type beer from kits, using Belle Saison yeast. As my regime is more "clean and sanitise with Star San" rather than "deep clean and exterminate" I now think that the lingering yeasts in an FV may spring to life in the next brew.
Not a problem from my perspective at present, but I am not much of a purist, stylistically, LOL.

divrack said:

that was always my thinking until the evil bug of death visited my abode.
this fooker will spring up out of nowhere and kill even a fully fermented barley wine with no o2.
honestly, with brewing everything is super cool until it isn't

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Yeah it's a game of odds for sure. I wouldn't recommend anyone be actually dirty in their procedures, but no need to panic over minor slips like a bit of hair getting in.

Not sure I should admit this but in one of my best brews I tasted the sample and accidentally spat it into the wort. Beer was brilliant.

Slid said:

Most of my beers over-attenuate and the most likely reason I can think of is that I use only high attenuating yeasts - US 05, S 04 (perhaps less so) and MJ M31 (which goes down to 1.003).
This sort of started when I first did Saison type beer from kits, using Belle Saison yeast. As my regime is more "clean and sanitise with Star San" rather than "deep clean and exterminate" I now think that the lingering yeasts in an FV may spring to life in the next brew.
Not a problem from my perspective at present, but I am not much of a purist, stylistically, LOL.

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Most likely the Belle Saison (Saccharomyces Cerevisiae var Diastaticus) if you are cleaning and sanitising with Star San alone, as it is next to useless for cleaning.

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Saccharomyces

It always interests me how Infections are viewed as a binary issue, between flawless beer or drain pour. Yes, it's very difficult to completely ruin a batch. However, the reality is there is a whole spectrum of infection inbetween. The cleanest breweries, produce the cleanest beers.

Clean, sanitised and sterile are vastly different things and the yeast we use contains some degree of contamination. As a result, all our beers are infected to some degree. Some more than others.

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Father in law worked in a brewery for decades...caustic,bleach,rinse.

Clint said:

Father in law worked in a brewery for decades...caustic,bleach,rinse.

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Yeah, caustic is the best. We did a homebrew club brew on the local breweries pilot kit, whilst simultaneously helping the head brewer on the big kit. Afterwards, we physically cleaned the big kit down and recirculated hot water through it, until it was running crystal clear through the underback. At this point the headbrewer joked it was "homebrew clean" and pitched in some hot caustic. Amazing how quickly and how brown the water turned.

I once lost 2 x 23 litre consecutive brews and it's a heartbreaking thing to have to suffer!

As a result, I am probably a bit OCD about sanitisation but then I make a mistake (e.g. dropping something into the wort) and go the "hope everything will be okay" route like everyone else.

However, at this time of the year the Fruit Fly is almost everywhere in the UK and it is responsible for many crimes against brewing! Apparently, the little swine doesn't even have to commit hari-kiri and die in the wort as it can transfer the nasties just by trying to have a drink of the wort!

The only three ways of dealing with Fruit Flies are:

• Spray the bejesus out of the place where you brew to kill all insects before you start.
• Attract Fruit Flies to the brewing area by setting up a trap; and then hope they prefer to die in the trap instead of the brew.
• Move near to the coast where the onshore breezes on hot days keep the little buggers inland!

I'm now fortunate enough to be in the last category, but even so I do see (and immediately zap with an insecticide) the odd Fruit Fly loitering around my garage.

I sincerely hope that your brew comes good but in the future please leave the FV alone for at least two weeks before you even think about getting an SG to see it it's finished.

Keep us posted as to what happens please! :thumb:

Right then, update time.

I bottled up last week using LME to prime.

Curiosity got the better of me and I've just polished off a bottle. I'll tell you what; it wasn't half bad. :-)

It had a nice level of carbonation and a tasty maltiness to it. It is a bit on the strong side mind.

Lessons I learned: Don't worry too much about an iffy whiff and use LME rather than sugar for priming.

But,, it will be there in the background. :no: One of my analysis found wild yeast and short rod (non pathogenic) bacteria. It turns out it is in our air and potable water up here. (So I have an air filtration system on order!!)
However, one of the many visiting brewers who drank lots of my brews said; 'don't beat yourself up about it. It happens all the time, your beer tastes good,,, Move on,,,'
I really do want to understand this and embrace it. If my local flora add to my brews fine!

But, for me I want to initially remove it/control it. Then add back when I want. But I do have control freak issues about such things,,,,, (Cleans the PC screen again,,,)

Slid said:

I was watching "Eat well for less" or something like that 8-9pm on BBC last night, the WC being over.

There was a short clip of the Sarsons brewery. Malt vinegar is made like beer, except without the hops, until fermentation is complete and then it sits in very large wooden casks filled with "wood wool" which contains the bacteria that turn ethyl alcohol to vinegar. They require a high temperature for this process to be effective.
I found it very interesting, although it was too short to be fully informative.

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Funny you should say that. I remember a few years back buying a bottle of "vinegar" from the chippy. It was in a plastic bottle like you see in the f&c shop but it was labelled as "Non-brewed condiment" no mention of the word "vinegar" anywhere. I wonder what that was? Did the same job on my cod and chips as Sarson's though.

I did a little throw together left over brew a few years ago only a small experimental batch and well that went vinegar.. It was evident straight away sadly..

You might be lucky its an of flavour of fermentation but if it is a def sarsons it will not get better..

I wonder, if instead of throwing it, if you permit it to go full vinegar, how much you could sell it for at farmers markets as artisan malt vinegar. Far better than non-brewed condiment.

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Sadfield said:

I wonder, if instead of throwing it, if you permit it to go full vinegar, how much you could sell it for at farmers markets as artisan malt vinegar. Far better than non-brewed condiment.

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I'd have to wear a lumberjack shirt, a neckerchief, a flat cap and grow a beard.

I don't know that I could live with myself looking like that.

Druncan said:

............. One of my analysis found wild yeast and short rod (non pathogenic) bacteria. It turns out it is in our air and potable water up here. (So I have an air filtration system on order!!)...........
But I do have control freak issues about such things,,,,, (Cleans the PC screen again,,,)

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WOW! Filtering the air for brewing! What's next? A water filtration and reverse osmosis system for the water? The purchase and wearing of "Scenes of Crime" type clothing complete with paper overalls, face masks, hair-nets and latex gloves?

I appreciate your OCD streak with regard to sanitisation (there's a bit of it in me) but I think we can go too far!

I have to wear all that nonsense in work....Im out!

Clint said:

I have to wear all that nonsense in work....Im out!

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Hmmm! I used to have the same attitude about safety but I slowly learned as:

1. My sister sent me some photographs of patients attending her hospital with cancer of the scrotum when she heard I was working in the oil & gas industry..
2. I saw close-up photographs of two eyeballs. The gentleman to whom they belonged apparently used the "squint" method when doing a quick job with a grinder; and the surface of his eyeballs looked like the craters of the moon!
3. My father retired early with pneumoconiosis after working as a coal-miner for 45 years.

I suppose I can't have done the job perfectly though because I have to wear hearing-aids in meetings and use subtitles when watching TV! Mea culpa! :hat:

The saying "Life's a bitch and then you die!" is very true but I'm pretty sure that no-one goes to work to be injured or to die! :thumb:

I wear it all...in work...the stuff I work with is very dangerous..plenty of heroes in the cemetery...

I used to offload Tetramethyl Lead (TML) at a Refinery.

Octel gave everyone a course on how to handle the stuff and the Instructor told us "The reason you wear all the safety gear is that if you get lead poisoning from this stuff you have bad dreams, go mad and die."

I asked him what the cure for lead poisoning was and he said "You obviously weren't listening. You have bad dreams go mad and die."

Everything to do with handling the TML was white so that the orange dye that it contained could be seen if there was any leak or contamination, but after nearly a year I hadn't seen so much as a drop of the stuff' so I wore all the gear until the following summer when it got really hot. To save time getting into and out of the gear I started keeping my own Tee shirt and underpants on underneath all the neoprene gear.

Again, I didn't see a drop of the stuff but one time after unloading a tanker full of TML I went home, had lunch and sat down in the chair to watch a bit of TV. As I settled into the chair, I pulled my Tee shirt down to get comfy and saw this big orange stain on the front! I started having bad dreams immediately and stared at the stain for a few seconds before remembering that I had just eaten beans on toast for lunch and one of the kids had jogged my arm. "Beans!" I thought and started to breathe again.

From then on I wore every bit of gear provided by the refinery ... :thumb:

... and a few weeks later I saw enough TML to last me a lifetime when one of the lads connected the tanker up "the wrong way round" and about 50 litres of the stuff sprayed out of a barometric loop on what was supposed to be a vacuum system.

Lucky or what!

ITMA said:

I would be absolutely astonished if a bit of arm hair would have such an effect. Despite all of the "sanitise, sanitise" mantras, it's very much harder to sour a brew than you realise - if you were *trying* to make an infected batch you'd struggle. Fermentation is a much more tolerant process than we think.

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And the Schadenfreude Award 2018 goes to.....ITMA the D*ckhead.

I'm now the proud owner of 40 pints of vinegar. Seems I talk out of my **** even more than I thought.

I did sanitise, only suspicious thing is I didn't use an airlock, which has been standard practice for me for a while.

I think it was gone before it was bottled.

I did not knowingly add any arm hair.

Bah. Live and learn.