Devanha XXX Disaster

[charliemartin]

I've been trying to recreate this beer from the 1980's for a few years now without success. My latest attempt was a complete disaster. Beginning to think this is jinxed. This time round I used Munich as the base malt to try to increase the maltiness, Carafa III instead of Roasted Barley for smoothness and Windsor yeast for flavour.
Unfortunately some water from my IC squirted out into the wort as I immersed it in the boil pot.
The Windsor stuck at 1.020 so I roused the yeast and upped the temp. This made no difference, so I made a starter of WLP007 and added it. This only brought it down by 2 points so I gave up and racked to polypin and bottles. Seemed to be okay at this point, but was a bit worried about bottle bombs. Anyway I opened a PET bottle about 10 days later and eeurgh! Putrid vinegar taste, virtually no carbonation, disgusting. Poured the whole batch down the sink.
Ah well, there's always next time.

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[Dave S]

I've never had good experience with Windsor. Used it 3 or 4 times and it's always stuck around 1020 as yours did. Annoyingly though, it's always decided to wake up again in the keg causing much over carbonation, so I'd be very wary of bottling it. Jim has has used Windsor quite a bit so maybe he can reveal his secret for success.

Never used Munich but from what I've read, it shouldn't make up more than 50% of the grist.

Neither of those issues would explain the vinegar thing though. That sounds like an infection.

[BenB]

You can easily make a 100% munich or vienna malt beer so I wouldn't worry about the %age of Munich.

I suspect the I/C was full of grotty water. The water going through the I/C at the end of cooling will obviously be at about 20 degrees so it's not been sanitised through boiling (even though the I/C itself will have been) so if you leave in there for any period of time it will go manky. Acetobacter or lacto sounds a likely culprit. You might be lucky and it might just be the PET bottle wasn't adequately sanitised and the beer itself is okay- I'd check another sample! Wierd thing is most infections will create their lactic acid, acetic acid etc by a pathway that also produces CO2 hence you get gushers which taste acidic. You've got a flat, acidic beer. Strange.

Did you prime or did you just assume the high SG would drop and naturally carbonate.

[BrannigansLove]

I'm not sure the I/C is to blame. At the point of immersing, the wort will be at 100c, so should kill off most infecting organisms. If the beer tasted OK at racking time, then my guess is the infection set in at this point, so I'd put the blame on the bottling process. Did you try any of the other bottles/polypin? If all were infected, I'd blame your bottling equipment, if it was limited to individual bottles, I'd blame your cleaning regime of the bottles.

[charliemartin]

I have tried the polypin which is exactly the same. I poured it straight down the drain. The gravity samples I tried weren't as bad as the bottle, but weren't great either. There was probably more than one opportunity for the contamination to get in, what with the IC and the poor fermentation from the Windsor and having to rouse the yeast and add more yeast. Whatever the cause, the end result was not nice. My main worry now is one of my currently fermenting brews in the same FV. I cleaned it thoroughly and sanitised with Starsan, but would have bleached it if I had realised there was an infected brew in it. First gravity sample tasted okay, but time will tell.

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[BrannigansLove]

I suffered an acetobacter infection on a batch I made last year, and took the following approach once the beer had been dumped. Bleached all my buckets, including the taps, thoroughly rinsed 3 times using v hot water, then used the wallpaper steamer with only the hose attached to steam clean everything. Everything then got a thorough spray of starsan, and I've not had any issues since. I tend to give everything an oxi clean after each brew now too.

[Dave S]

I had a similar issue a couple of brews ago but instead of bleaching my FVs I threw them away and bought new ones. Both of the old ones had scratches so I didn't want to take the chance. Everything else got blitzed, and fingers crossed........

[Jim]

.............. Jim has has used Windsor quite a bit so maybe he can reveal his secret for success............

I just hydrate it in water at around 30-35C, bung it in the wort and keep the temperature at around 20C for 2 weeks.

I've used it a few times without any problems (though not as much as I've used Notty which has always been my staple).