Hi, from my reading around the subject, I am really not sure if my first batch of lager has become infected. It does not look nice. I cannot smell anything, when it was fermenting it did smell lovely but now nothing.
It was a coppers kit which stalled. I had an issue with the imersion heater. Kept adjusting it to get the temperature right opening and closing the ferment. I was very clean thoughout the process. I washed and sterilised my hands before touching heater.
I tried adding saflager 34/70 lager yeast and fermentation restarted ( I used coopers orignally). Over a week and a half later the airlock stopped again. I should have attached a pic below.
Do you think it is infected? Its the round bubble type stuff that makes me think I am unlucky.
I bravely drank a little, it did not taste horrible but It was not as nice as shop bought (although I didn't expect it to).
There was lots of bits in the sample I took, would this interfere with the FG? I think it still has a bit to go till it is in the bottle region of hydrometer but it looks to me as fermentation is ultra slow or stopped.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
Coopers don't give a hydrometer reading to aim for, but as a guide it is usually around 1.010 and the reading then needs to stay constant.
Once it reaches around 1.010 and stops, it can then be bottled or barrelled. It will lack flavour and be cloudy at that stage, but leave it sealed up in bottles or a barrel for a good few weeks and it will then clear and carbonate, and the flavours will then fully develop. We have had some brews that tasted quite bad when bottled, but after a few weeks they have developed into fantastic brews, so as long as there is no mould they are always worth giving time to develop.
As for the taste, It'll get much better once it's bottled or put in a keg and left for a few weeks in secondary fermentation. You might be pleasantly surprised how good it might actually be
Also like you i use those immersion heaters, and just like you, the first couple of brews I had to play around with it a bit adjusting the temperature, all I will say is once you have it correctly adjusted, from then on they are really reliable and easy to use, keep your brew a nice constant temperature due to the inbuilt thermostat.
Good luck keep us posted.
It has been bottled for 2 weeks now, not opened one, I was going to leave it another 2 weeks.