Bad beer!?!?

Ron Reyes (Papa Piggy) · Nov 7, 2019

I have made many very good beers. But as of a few months ago almost every batch has been sub standard with off flavours I can't quite diagnose. Then one of my last brews came out fabulous a basic pale ale. So I asked my self what was the one difference. And I think it may be my auto siphon has gone bad? This particular good batch was fermented in my spiedle fermenter and instead of racking it to the keg I used the tap and a new bit of hose. The other thing that leads me to the auto siphon is that in every case the beer tasted really good prior to kegging. I hope I'm right cause I can't stand the thought of throwing out any more beer.

BOB357 · Nov 7, 2019

That's always a good candidate for spreading infections. Several good hiding places and a porous rubber component. Sounds like you found the culprit.

GFHomebrew · Nov 7, 2019

Yep and to in force your thinking why don't you brew and package one of them dud batches this exact same way.

Craigerrr · Nov 7, 2019

If you are kegging, you can do pressure transfer for very minimal cost. It probably isn't necessary but I add C02 to the top of the fermenter, then add a blanket to the keg as well, before using C02 to push the beer into the keg through the out port.

GFHomebrew · Nov 7, 2019

Craigerrr said:
If you are kegging, you can do pressure transfer for very minimal cost. It probably isn't necessary but I add C02 to the top of the fermenter, then add a blanket to the keg as well, before using C02 to push the beer into the keg through the out port.

Here's another ideah I saw off Gashslug recently raise the ferm vessel higher than recieving keg attach the liquid to liquid then your gas out on your keg attach that back to your fermentor (works for them fermentors with ball lock ports). What happens is the transferring beer pushes the gas put of the keg and back into the fermentor keeping near equal preassure. So you don't actually use much co2 in the transfer process. It's pretty slow like 20min plus according to old mate but another cool way of doing it.

I'll have a dig for the video.