Leaking Festival Kit???

[mrmeaker]

Hi Guys,

I've been a bit of a lurker on here for a bit and found some great advice since I started doing kits at the start of the year.

Now the point of this post, a couple of months back I made a bulk order of kits (well 3 and some random gubbins) to get free delivery. Checked them all when they arrived and put them in the garage, on a shelf, until I came to do them. So last night I decided to get the last one on, a Festival Razorback IPA, only to find a bit of a malty sticky mess at the bottom of the box... Upon later inspection I found a tiny hole in one of the bags and what looked like a slight hole in the bottom of the other at the joint of the plastic (?) sections. Has anyone had this issue before?

I didn't know if it was because after I had checked the bags, when they initially arrived, I just threw them back in the box without much regard (which may have squashed them and damaged them), or if they had been attacked by some critter in the garage (although the box was basically fine if a bit malty), or it was a faulty batch of packaging.

Anyway, I decided to make it up in any case (hoping the boiling water into the malt will kill any potential nasty, then the alcohol / CO2) as the other option was to chuck it. Fingers crossed, but I'm not holding out much hope.

I suppose the point of this post is, am I the first one this has happened to?

[racinsnake]

Festivals are a good range of kits, Golden stag is a fav of mine. Imho the bags are pretty tough, so I would guess it's a manufacturing fault rather than a master brewers crumpet fingers at fault.
My advice would be ferment it short if you've lost a significant amount of malt, to compensate.
Sit back and relax as I'm sure it will be fine.

[mrmeaker]

Yeah, Golden Stag is one of my favourites too (I've done 2 Golden Stags so far), so thought I'd try this one.

I brewed it to 21lt in the end and will just keep an eye on it.

[racinsnake]

Cool. Sounds like your on a winner.