We left our brews in the spare room with the radiator turned off and with a thermostat controlled heater to keep the temperature constant at about 23 Celsius.
The Airlock on my wife's wine bubbled away once i made sure it was sealed. My Beer however did not. Here are some of step i took which may have been a factor and so should be avoided.
1) The kit told me to hydrate my yeast in warm water while heating up the two cans of Malt in hot water. So what i did was start heating two saucepans of water and when the water in one got warm, i poured it into a mug and poured the yeast in and water may have been too warm.
2) I kept opening the lid to check which may have let in an infection.
3) On a few occasions i stirred and shook it and this may have let too much oxygen in.
4) before pitching the yeast i may not have let it cool down enough and also may not have aerated it enough to add initial oxygen to the mix.
There may be other reasons but they are the main things.
Some of the things i tried in order to rescue it are as follows
1) On the assumption i killed my yeast, i pitched another from a wheat beer kit. This did start fermentation for a while but did not ferment all the way.
2) Lots of shaking and stirring to mix up the yeast again.
3) I even pitched some baking yeast before i left for the US for Christmas.
4) When i got back from the US i put in some yeast nutrient which did fizz up and cause a reaction but did not change my gravity reading after a few days.
Now even though my attempt failed, i did learn a lot in trying to rescue it and am far more prepared for brewing beer. I will be starting again this weekend. I think i will try something simple like a Cider. I wonder will it taste like Magners?
During the failed Beer making attempt we made two batches of wine. The initial White medium sweet and a second batch of Rosé and they both turned out pretty well.
I will post about my trip to the US and the beers i tried there later and then i will keep an update on my next batch of beer.
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