My first Homebrew lager is flat. Help!
I’ve transferred and pressurised a barrel of 40 pints of youngs lager kit, I’ve followed all the instructions regarding cleaniness and everything else and it’s been in the barrel 2 weeks now and it’s flat.
2 questions:
Any way to save it and what did I do wrong?
thanks.
It also tastes gash but I understand this is normal. 😀

Did you prime the barrel with brewing sugar before you added the beer?

yes I think so I put in the 70g (iirc) of sugar into the barrel and then put the liquid on top.

larger in pressure barrels is rarely fizzy, 70g sounds small i do that normally for ale. if you want pub style fizzy beer you need to bottle or invest in a corny setup.

my father in law seems to think that it might be because I pressurised it straight away with co2, but none of the instructions said not to do this.

Hmm…

70g doesn’t seem like a lot for 40 pints.

I bottle mine and add a carbonation drop to each bottle which is essentially 5 grams of dextrose per bottle

This might by why its flat.

Also if it tastes gash then something is wrong.

My home brew wheat beer is as good as shop bought beer (if a little lower in ABV) mind you I’ve never tried making home brew lager and not tried a Young’s kit

???

Last time I did some I had to gas it each day I was drinking it, but our barrel has a leak. I’ll ask the missus her mum owns a home brew shop and she works there 🙂

OKay! The 70g was on the instructions. So I could try adding more sugar, but how do I get the top off the barrel without it blowing out the top. Completely new to this so forgive the niavety, there might be a release valve at the top so I’ll have a look when I get home.

She reckons there’s a leak in your barrel or something isn’t tight enough.

if there’s no pressure in the barrel you should be able to simply unscrew it. to test if there’s pressure, does the lager fizz out or does it struggle to glug out?

If there is pressure in the barrel DO NOT UNSCREW THE CAP. I stupidly did this once & nearly lost an eye. I did lose the cap missile.

It also depends on the size of the barrel. If it’s a “budget” barrel with a tap at the bottom, there’s less air space on top of 23L than there is in say a Rotokeg.

Personally, I don’t like barrels. if it goes off, you’ve lost the whole batch; I prefer bottles although cleaning 40 bottles at a time is a pain. I also highly recommend a “bottling stick”

for a real ale, you’re looking at 1 tsp of sugar in each bottle; if lager I’d go for maybe 1.5 tsp per bottle.
Or you could “batch prime” with 80-130g of sugar in the fermenter before you transfer it to bottles/barrel, plus 0.5 tsp in each bottle.

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk is the font of all knowledge

There’s defo pressure in the barrel as it fizzes out the tap but then it’s flat. I have a stella glass that’s got all scoring on the bottom which always makes lager bubble but my lager does nothing. 🙁

edit: thanks John I’ll have a gander about that site.

Let the professional through. . . .
a.- Do you have a pressure guage on your keg , you really need one
b.- What gravity did you finish you initial fermentation at?
c.- What temperature is it now?
d.- Did you dissolve the sugar (primings) before transferring the beer into the keg?
e.- Is the beer yeasty or bright? can you see through it?

Im not a huge fan of over fermenting beer ( stresses out the yeast ) , then priming with cane sugar for secondary fermentation and CO2 Vols. Better to stop the ferment with iced water at around 1014′ and then transfer to a keg with a PRV . CO2 adsorbtion will be better at lower temps , as its supposed to be eurofizz it relies on the carbonation to add flavour

What STM said. Although I just stop mine by putting it somewhere cold (e.g. outside overnight, but not in august).

Are you using a pressurised barrel (i.e. it actualy holds a few bar pressure) or one with a little bleed valve/airlock? The former gives fizzy beer (pub larger, or a boddingtns/creamflow/guinnes style ale/stout), the latter gives a more ‘real ale’ style lack of fizz.

And if it tastes gash then you messed up somewhere. It may or may not still get you pissed, but it will taste gash. 4 times in 5 mine tastes better than the stuff in the pub, the 5th it’s awfull. Practice and paitience helps, it wasn nearer 1 in 2 to start!

Great thanks for your replies. STM you sound like you know what you’re on about, I’ll email you privately if you don’t mind? I was hoping it would be a lot more simple than this and I’d end up with very cheap stella! lol.

Fairy Liquid.
It was good enough for Dreamytime Escorts.
APF