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OK guys! It's finally happened. I have a totally undrinkable brew of Coopers Draught. Even OH won't drink it (and that's saying something). Definitely not infected, but remember that "fairy floss" taste I have spoken about a few times? Well this time it's like it's got the whole god-damn carnival in it!!! Mega burnt sugar taste !! This was my recipe:

1 can Coopers Draught goop
1 kg LDME
250 dextrose
Kit yeast

Is this what happens when the malt overpowers the hops? Was the Draught not bitter enough to mix that much malt with it maybe? Should I have added lots more hops? Doc, Warra, Bum, someone - H E L P! What if I left the batch for 6 months - would it improve do you think? (This was my 43rd brew - first one to be undrinkable).

However.....

My first attempt at the forum's JSGA clone is a winner! Love it. (OH can't drink too much at one sitting though - which is a good thing I think...) Anna

Sad news there Anna.
Did you take an sg reading and a finishing .Sounds like you may have had some unfermented sugars in there.
My 2c steer away from kit yeasts its a bit like a lucky dip ,you dont know how old or where and at what temps its been sitting in.
Do you aerate your wort before pitching? Rehydrate your yeast? All these things help. And yes i would have put some hops in that
as the 1kg of malt would need some to balance it out.

Sorry to hear about this Anna, . You are not having a good run. I would not have thought that this would be too much malt but it may have been a struggle for the kit yeast. I would suggest that you need to repost bits and pieces from previous posts so that a full picture is given. Restate the process that you use outlining chemicals etc that you use. As this taste is not isolated to one brew I would suggest that you need to start with an elimination process, equipment, brewing process, water etc. Think back to the recipe where you first had problems, did you use the kit yeast then, did you first use additional malt. Did you boil the malt and dextrose? I know you have probably been over this a thousand times, but mayby some fresh eyes may help.

Cheers Hirns

Thanks Wrighty. I never thought of unfermented sugars! I'll check the SGs tonight and see what it was (I'm at work at the moment). I do always ferment for 2 whole weeks though, so it should have been OK.

hirns wrote:Sorry to hear about this Anna, . You are not having a good run. I would not have thought that this would be too much malt but it may have been a struggle for the kit yeast. I would suggest that you need to repost bits and pieces from previous posts so that a full picture is given. Restate the process that you use outlining chemicals etc that you use. As this taste is not isolated to one brew I would suggest that you need to start with an elimination process, equipment, brewing process, water etc. Think back to the recipe where you first had problems, did you use the kit yeast then, did you first use additional malt. Did you boil the malt and dextrose? I know you have probably been over this a thousand times, but mayby some fresh eyes may help.

Cheers Hirns

Thanks for your help Hirns. Actually, the best brews I've done were when I first started and only used the straight kit - can of stuff, Coopers enhancers and kit yeast, with the Coopers "half a cup of bleach in the fermenter" instructions. I sanitise the bottles with Milton no-rinse baby bottle steriliser (diluted). Never had a problem until I started fiddling around and using all malt. In those days I didn't worry about temperature either and now I'm so careful to keep the brews around 18-20 deg. C. My process re cleaning, sanitizing, etc. is the same as it's always been and yes, Wrighty, I certainly do aerate the wort (but not while it's hot - any more). Never have re-hydrated the yeast and, like I said, it's never been a problem. Anyway, I'll check my readings tonight (I always record everything) and see if that sheds any light. I am suspicious about whether the fermentation was finished though, because one of my fermenters must have a leak and has stopped "blooping", although like I said, it was brewing for 2 whole weeks, so should have been finished.

Anna , dont trust air locks as a sign of fermentation
They are a waste of time imho. remove the rubber seal from the lid and gladwrap your fermentor.
Now you have a live view of your ferment and a picture is worth a thousand airlocks
Interested to hear your hydrometer reading. Dont just trust the 2 week thing always take readings its the only
real way of telling whats going on and the fact you can taste test as well.
As you say you keep records and none are more important than hydro readings.

I think you get my point.

Sorry to hear about this, Anna.

To my thinking, part of the answer may well be the 1 kg of malt. Malt is not fully fermentable, so it will leave you with some extra body and some residual malt sweetness. There's nothing wrong with that as such, but if you do not add some extra bittering and flavour hops, you throw the beer out of balance. That's where brewing software such as BeerSmith et al can be a big help. It will give you reasonably accurate predictions of your starting and finishing gravities, and your gravity/bitterness ratio.

The other issue may be your fermenting temperature. I know the prevailing wisdom is to ferment cool at 18 to 20ºC, and that works a treat with an AG brew with a fresh pack of proprietary yeast such as Safale US05 etc, or liquid yeasts built up in a starter. As noted above, it may not work so well with kit yeast. Kit yeast are bred to cope with the higher temperatures recommended in the kit instructions, and give you a quick start and fast fermentation. However, kit yeast may tend to slow down at the lower temperatures, and when you add an additional 1 kg of malt, they may struggle, and never completely ferment all there is to ferment. This may be so even after two weeks in the fermenter. Potentially, kit yeasts may also underpitch a brew such as yours.

And, of course, we have no idea just how the wort in the kit can was brewed, ie what the malt make up is, what temperature it was mashed etc. As it is a Draught, it may have been done towards the higher end, compared to a pale ale etc, which also wouldn't assist the issue you are dealing with. If you wish to use 1kg of LDME, perhaps another lighter kit can could be the go?

So what's the answer to this, if I am correct?
Well, firstly you may need to do a 60 minute boil with some of your LDME at an approximate SG of 1.040 for your additional hops, adding the balance of your ingredients in the last 5 to 10 minutes only.
Secondly, as noted above, you may need fresher and better yeast. All of the Fermentis range are good (Safale, Saflager etc) as are the Danstar yeasts. Both of these are also available from CraftBrewer, repackaged under their own name, and always fresh. Alternatively, it may be time to experiment with some liquid yeast and build up a starter.

Brewing is fun, isn't it? It's a journey with a continual learning curve, but I'm sure you'll get there.
Glad to read the JSGA worked out nicely. Of course, that's a recipe which has had all the bugs ironed out by others, so you shouldn't have problems with it!

With all due respect to the sound advice posted already - since when has unfermented LDME tasted burned? These issues are all definitely possible contributors to the sweetness but there has to be something else going on here too. Yes, we all taste some things slightly differently but "burned" is not entirely subjective, right? I'm sure we'd all agree that it is a pretty full on flavour and hard to either mistake or ignore. This is more a stab in the dark than the voice of experience but is it possible, Anna, that you've been burning undissolved malt in a boil trying to sanitise it (and possibly scraping that burned material into your fermenter too)? I doubt it as I'm sure you'd make that connection immediately yourself.

Fair comment, Bum. Overlooked the burnt taste comment.

I agree with Bum, and the only thing I can put a mega burnt taste down to is if the LDME was not totally dissolved before it was brought to the boil, thus scorching it in the bottom of the pot.

Anyone have any better ideas?

Thanks for the thought Bum, but I didn't do any boil with this one - just dissolved the malt in 2L boiling water in the fermenter, then added the can. In hindsight, I should have known better (from reading this forum for 12 months now) and added some bittering hops, especially as the Coopers Draught is pretty light on in that department. I'm probably getting carried away with the "go all malt" theory. The "burnt" taste I referred to I guess is a subjective thing - it tasted like that to me, but my husband thinks it's just "fairy floss", and it definitely does taste very sugary. I think Warra may be spot on about the malt being too much for the kit yeast, although according to my notes it did finish at 1.014. Funny thing though, I had the same problem with a CPA a few months ago (thread "Yucky Brews") and it was made with just a can of Coopers PA and No.2 Enhancer (no added hops). I believe the CPA is even lower IBU than the Draught (?), so the No.2 again may have been too heavy in malt.

I just read back over my old notes and Warra, I think you may have it with the kit yeasts needing higher temperatures! Ironically, looking at my notes and posts, this problem seems to have started when I "solved" the temperature problem and managed to bring my usual 24-26 deg. C down to a constant 18-20 deg! This is backed up by the fact that the few times I have used "fancy" yeasts at the lower temperatures my brews have been great.

I guess the only way to prove this is to do a "kit only" brew at a higher temperature and see what happens! Anna

Going back to the "yucky" brews for a minute - are there any of those left and if so are they getting worse, staying the same or improving with time?

No Bum, none of those left (we forced ourselves!). They weren't as bad as this current one though - and like I said, I didn't use all malt, just No.2 enhancer in that one. But I DID ferment at around 20 deg.C with kit yeast.

It will be interesting to see if any other kit yeast users have experienced this problem when fermenting lower than Coopers advise. Hmmm, might send an email to the friendly guy at Coopers and ask the question...

Anna, it's not just the temp with the kit yeast, but volume as well. The Cooper's sachets are only 7grms where as most of the good yeast dry sachets are 12grms. In addition you also know about how poorly that 7grms may have been treated. Bum made a good point in relation to the boil. When I asked did you boil the malt it was because recently I witnessed a guy buy a kilo of malt from a local HB store. The large bulk paper bag was on the floor and he unrolled the already opened paper top, took a scoop with a jug that had been sitting on a side shelf and then weighed it before puting it into a airtight zip bag. I would suggest that this guy would want to be boiling his malt.

You may also want to read through my post dark sweet brews.

http://homebrewandbeer.com/forum/viewto ... f=2&t=9861

I have a feeling that I've already been down your path and have now addressed the same problem with the help of those on this forum. In short I started with better yeast, I found that regular malt without hops as suggested by Warra, TL and others is too much without the extra hops. I still failed with Boonies LCPA which resulted in another dark sweet beer until I replaced the local LDME with Morgan's Master Malt Extract, Beer Enhancer EXTRA pale. I found that even the Cooper's Malt was too much (Dark, sweet etc) for this recipe. The extra pale has worked very well and I've also made some very successful partials replacing the kilo of malt with grain that I simply mashed in a stockpot and went from horrible to beautiful beers overnight. I've been brewing for nearly ten years and had been making good simple homebrew, when it all came undone when I started reading about how a kilo of malt would turn me into a master brewer !

Finally, I spent the money on BeerSmith and it has given me a huge confidence boost in being able to adds bits and pieces and have a much better idea of what a brew is going to be like before Ive even put it down. When I downloaded the trial I entered some of my failed recipes and suprise, suprise you could see immediatly that they were going to be terrible, dark brews!!

Hirns

hirns wrote:I've been brewing for nearly ten years and had been making good simple homebrew, when it all came undone when I started reading about how a kilo of malt would turn me into a master brewer !

Hirns

I am pretty certain this is the problem Hirns - I had to laugh when I read your above comment about the kilo of malt turning you into a master brewer! I'm beginning to think I've also fallen into that trap. I guess it should be obvious that a kilo of malt calls for more hops (hindsight is great isn't it?) But that doesn't explain why my earlier CPA with No.2 enhancer tasted similar - not as bad, but definitely "fairy flossy". Maybe No.2 is too malty for PA too, even though that's what Coopers recommend. I did get a private recipe from the guy at Coopers which called for only 500gm of LDME and 300 gm dex, which is carbing now, made with kit yeast. Anyway, I've just sent an email to him and it will be interesting to see what he has to say about the temperatures.

Anna wrote:But that doesn't explain why my earlier CPA with No.2 enhancer tasted similar - not as bad, but definitely "fairy flossy".

Yes, this is why I feel that this issue goes beyond your ingredients. I suspect you still don't want to hear that (just like you didn't in your earlier thread). Amongst the faults you describe are burned flavours and sourness - these are not standard kit beer or LDME flavours (excepting that for some kit-twang seems to come across as a bit sour, but as mentioned previously I doubt this is starting to appear for you at brew 40-something). I hope you find the easy fix you're looking for.

And BE2 is certainly not too malty for anything - not even the Cerveza tin.

Ha! You're onto me Bum. I AM looking for an "easy fix" and hate the thought of having to change my processes, now that I've got a nice little procedure going.

Since my earlier posts I've been checking out the Coopers Home Brew recipes on their website and there are several recipes there which call for all malt, no added hops and - guess what? - fermenting around 21 deg C - for Ales !!

So, damn it, you're probably right Bum - back to the drawing board.

Here's the response I just received from the Cooper's guy:

"There should be no problem with fermenting the brew at 18C – 22C with the kit yeast (provided it is not near or beyond the best before date). I advise brewers, with the facility to control fermentation temperature, to start the brew at 24C for the first 12hrs then draw it down to the desired ferment temp.

The 2 brews, detailed below, have stopped about 2 points short of expected FG but this is not a big deal (might be hydro error) and certainly would not produce the “fairy floss” character you describe.

Your cleaning sanitising method sounds okay for the fermenting tub, providing you make sure there are no traces of chlorine smell prior to adding the ingredients.

The active ingredient in Milton baby bottle solution, as I recall, is sodium hypochlorite – the same ingredient in bleach (some bleach brands contain sodium hydroxide as well). As such, this may be leaving a slight chlorine aroma in the bottles. Bottles don’t really need to be sanitised, they only need to look clean and bright.

Having said all that, chlorine reacts in the beer to create harsh metallic like flavours – not at all like the problem you describe."

????? Anna

Anna wrote:Here's the response I just received from the Cooper's guy:

... Bottles don’t really need to be sanitised, they only need to look clean and bright.

Could it have something to do with your priming sugar/process? Did you notice the fairy floss flavour before bottling?

gregb wrote:

Anna wrote:Here's the response I just received from the Cooper's guy:

... Bottles don’t really need to be sanitised, they only need to look clean and bright.

Yeah - I was waiting for someone to notice that line....

This was his explanation:

"Your beer making gear can never be too clean and sanitised!! However, bottling is not so critical compared to when you first put the ingredients in the fermenting tub.

This is because the solution going into the bottle has about 25million cells per ml of yeast in suspension, hops and alcohol. All these things help to preserve the brew. Also, the yeast cleans up the oxygen in the headspace fairly promptly while metabolising the priming sugar."

Sounds reasonable...... Anna