Welcome back CS! That’s a good question… when I first started, I didn’t use star-san, the usual one-step claimed to sanitize… or maybe it did but not no more? I had a few batches I dumped… icky pickled brews…
Sneezles61
star san but thinking about cycling thru different ones incase i have something in my equipment somewhere that has build a resistance to star san
Sanitizer doesn’t take the place of good washing. I just do it for insurance. Ive made beer and wine from just washing. Im still thinking infection. You don’t need to replace your equipment maybe some tubing. I’ve beat back infections with bleach solutions.
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@mattbrew83 do me a favor. Now that you have temp control pick up a SIMPLE extract beer kit. Like a blonde ale, amber ale, Belgian wit… again something simple. Brew it exactly as the recipe dictates. Use distilled water and NO WATER ADDITIONS. Use your fermentation chamber/temp control and all other regular processes. My thought is that if you’ve hardly ever made a drinkable batch it’s hard to dial into what’s going on. With the extract batch it will help us start at something.
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definitely will and report back, probably a hefe or something, i enjoy those
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Since the word stale was used, and as others have mentioned, that sounds like oxidation. Could there be a less than ideal seal in the fermenter?
My first time with a conical, I was quite dumb with my trub dumps and oxidized the crap outta the beer. Could a less than ideal seal be contributing? Maybe even a bad poppet on either post of the keg?
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Matt,
Sledge hammer approach
Because of your numerous and high percentage of failures start over completely from scratch without spending a lot of money. You can do this by buying a 1 gallon starter kit from NB link is here Homebrewing Starter Kit With Siphonless Fermenter - 1 Gallon.
79.99. But before you order it, go out and purchase similar beers to the ones offered in the kit. Taste them, and have a friend taste them as well. Pick one that you both like. For example, if you want to brew caribou slobber, buy some moose drool which caribou slobber is a clone of.
Do not use any of your existing equipment or materials. Not even a piece of tubing , your wort chiller your starsan your frig your swamp cooler etc. Don’t even use your brew pot…borrow a pot from kitchen. Follow the instructions exactly, do not do anything differently even though your years of experience tell you there is a better way to do something. Just to be sure, use spring water not tap water not distilled water or RO water or water that you have added chemicals to.
After you have brewed 3 successful 1 gallon kits, which both you and a friend like, then you can, one at a time make changes which more closely follow your current larger scale procedure. Do this at least twice for each change you make. While painstaking, this will get to the root cause(or causes) of your failures. And along the way you will likely be making beer that you like to drink. For example, after you have made three one gallon kits successfully, maybe try fermenting in the keg like you do, but use everything else from the kit. If you then use the keg 2-3 times and beer tastes good then make one additional change.
Here is a link to a way of brainstorming for possible causes of quality issues,
6Ms of Production (man, machine, material, method, mother nature and measurement) - Kaufman Global.
To answer your original question, wine is much easier than beer to make. However, if you don’t like wine no sense in going this route. I like the most expensive wine kits like stags leap merlot, lodi 11 cab, and amarone. Do not switch to wine until you find out what the root cause is.
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Well wine is easy to make but really really good wine is a bit harder. Nothing Ive made from a kit was that great. Fresh juice together with some crushed grapes comes out better. And a good amount of my wine is at least as good as some lower shelf stuff. The problem is you need to wait a long time before you know.
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I did a blind taste testing with 3 people of store bought stags leap merlot and what I made from the kit. 3 glasses two the same one different. Blind to all. I could not taste the difference between the 3 nor could another person. My daughter was able to use her nose to detect a slight difference between the wines and identified the two pours that were the same. Coincidently she liked my wine slightly better.
We went on to test lodi 11 cab vs stags leap merlot. Easy to taste the difference and lodi 11 preferred. All the kits have grape skins.
As an aside, my 7 year on grand daughter did a three way pour of bottled water vs expensive home RO carbon remineralized water kit. She tasted difference and liked the RO water better. She got a kick out of the testing and did all sorts of other tastings all non alcoholic.
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hey everyone, again thank you very much , im glad to say i just sampled a breakfast stout (which i thought i messed up) but its absolutely stellar beer, the coffee and chocolate blends in so perfect and it is truly delicious, its a great feeling having many fails to this,you all helped me with your suggestions and if i may now return the favor and help you, never quit(with anything) and always move forward no matter how discouraged you might become, cheers everyone, always move forward one love
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So, ah… what’s next?
Sneezles61
Glad you’re getting it figured out! What’s going in the fermenter next?
What changes did you make to brewing practice or equipment which resulted in making good beer?
Basically what I did was brew every style out there then concentrate on the ones I liked and tweeked them to my liking. One thing I always advise is keeping the recipe simple
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What do you think did the trick?
