I made a killer wort :(

SOLVED: I was stupid. One litre less water in the kettle meant my temperature probe wasn't touching the water and strike temperature ended up being higher than intended, which obviously obliterated the enzymes and no sugar was produced.

First total failure of my homebrew journey, and I have no idea why... I was really looking forward to this brew, a pitch-black stout with smoked wheat, chocolate malt and black malt. For yeast, I was anticipating to try Alzymologist's speciality.

However, it's been four days in the fermenter and I've pitched three yeasts – first the Alzymologist (made a starter), then my usual fresh yeast without a starter and for the last desperate attempt some dry wine yeast – I can only come to the conclusion that my wort is poison. Not a sliver of CO2 has been produced. First yeast did produce heat in the wort for a day, but no CO2. Tried heating the wort, agitating and all, but it remains dead.

Some little changes in my process were made – 18 liters instead of 19 for mashing so that I could fit 900 grams extra malt in, and strike temperature up by one degree to 72 °C due to less water and more grain. Tomorrow evening I'm going to have to dump 20 litres of fine wort down the toilet and plan another brew day. Damn, this loss hits like having to bury a pet...

26 comments

Btw this can be found by just using iodine solution to test it. I think that it can be found at pharmacy. Your wort is quite dark but it is doable to test it.
Put few drops of wort on plate, on side the iodine and look for colour change on the border where it mixes.

Did you take a gravity reading?
- +1 for gravity reading.
  Also 4 days is nothing, give it a week or two at least.
- No, I don't have means to measure that other than carrying the kettle and fermenter around :) Gotta get a meter one of these days.
  
  The main ingredient in any brewing is patience. I hope you'll give it time. It hasn't ever happened to me but I have heard stories of worts that fermented this way. Think of a number of days you'd consider waiting for results, double it, and add a week. While you wait, buy a hydrometer.

Silly question, but you did actually include malts which produce sugars that can ferment? I brew by the seat of my pants quite a lot, but I always take an OG reading.
- I think too that this is it, those malts op listed, while carrying a lot of flavour, do not have many enzymes, op might not have converted enough starch
- There's 5 kilos of active malt (Simpson's Maris Otter Pale and Viking smoked wheat which they say can be used like pilsner malt), 1,9 kilos of roasted non-active stuff. And it's sticky sugary. Grain bill then is not a problem.

Sorry for your loss. I was waiting for this brew too!
Did the starter start though?
What was the grain bill? And in starter?
Let me know if you need another tube! Amount in that package should be enough for typical batch even without starter, although making a starter is always a good idea. This strain usually starts within hours.
- Yeah, such a bummer... It might be the syrup in the starter that has gone bad, I ended up using leftovers there. The starter was 1,5 litres of filtered & boiled water with 1 dl of dark sugarcane syrup and some yeast nutrient dissolved in. It was at 26 °C when I let the yeast onboard. I only had the starter going for an hour, no activity was seen in that time but I wasn't really looking either.
  The grain was:
  
  Simp Maris Otter Pale 3800 g Viking Smoked Wheat 1400 g Viking Black Malt 700 g Viking Choc Light 1000 g
  ... two top lines are active. And I WILL brew this again :D
  
  Now here the most suspicious part is yeast nutrient. Like any fertilizer, it does turn into poison when used excessively, especially in first hours of adaptation when cell machinery is being adjusted to new environment. One hour starter is too short even for 1 budding, but induces extra state transition stress onto yeast. Proper starter time should be at least 6 hours, 24 is recommended, to drive yeast to exponential-plateau transition region. Short starters are useful for rehydration of dry yeast; of course, no budding or multiplication happens there - and thus best medium for dry yeast rehydration is sterile (or boiled) water with no food nor nutrient.
  Nutrient dosage might be surprisingly hard problem in small volumes, as many products are powdered mixtures of various compounds, naturally as homogeneous as you've mixed them, and with size of particles getting close to size of dose, it's easy to skew composition just by sampling.
  You've probably got around 40% sugar in that syrup solution, which is higher than what I use for sweet mead recipes. I'm not sure lager yeast can tolerate this gravity, although it could, I was just planning to explore that dimention this year, mead on beer yeast.
  Neither of this explains later yeasts not starting, unless there was enough nutrient to make whole batch salty. Let me know if I can help you troubleshooting this system further, I'm sad and curious now.

Don't throw it out yet. Buy a hydrometer and look into your temperature control. Your other equipment sounds expensive, a hydrometer is far cheaper than your other stuff or throwing out a wort. (I had to learn the hard way that ferm temperature is everything, regardless of the cost or quantity of my yeast.)
- Thanks for the encouraging words :) I guess this one is a goner though, it strangled a fourth pitch of a starter that was certified going strong when I put it in. Even if that stuff did eventually ferment, I'm not sure if I'd dare drink the cursed brew XD
  I've been trying different temperatures, too – the setup is not super expensive per se, but it is versatile in that I have the fermenter insulated and can both cool and heat it with an automatic temperature controller (to heat it I borrow wife's hair dryer, it's there now holding 23 °C :D ). My usual fresh yeast is super easy in that regard, I'd normally allow a couple of hours after pitch at the ~25 °C that the wort tends to stand at at that time and then set the thermostat to 15 - 18 °C for the entire bubbly bit, so normally all I need is cooling against heat produced by the yeast.

Boil it again to kill that wine yeast, pitch some dry ale yeast once it reaches ale temps. Leave it for a week and don't look at it.

What makes you think it's not fermenting if you can't take a reading? What are you fermenting in? Is it possible it is going but you just have a leak?
- I have a threshold valve on the gas breather line, so I can see on a meter if pressure has accumulated, plus a water lock after the meter to show the escaping gas. These have been my references regarding fermentation. No leaks there :)
  
  K, yea sounds similar to my setup. I've had issues where the fermentor lid wasn't seated right and gas leaked before where you'd see the bubbles. Just a thought. I assume you opened it up and there's no foam?

Wait! Don't throw it all away, I want to know! Can you sample like 50ml of that poison and send it to me?
- I did actually take a sample intending to send it for science, but a taste test settled what was wrong with the wort: it wasn't sweet. And when doing the re-run brew, I pretty much solved the mystery. Having one litre less water in the kettle for the initial heating to strike temperature meant that my temperature meter wasn't touching the water when I set it up like I usually do :o) Thus the water got too hot and I ended up mangling my enzymes.
  Take #2 was cooked yesterday and is now happily bubbling away. For the next brew due in a month or so, I'll put in an order for some more Lager Malty from you :)

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