We were very careful with sterility (as much as is possible with a dog and a rather dusty rustic house). We were too depressed to make a third attempt for some time, we didn't know what had gone wrong, so we didn't know what to fix. Between the 1st and 2nd batches we changed our sparge technique (we bought a new brew pan with a tap rather than using a pillow case...)
We have made some kit beers in the mean time, but overall the rate of brewing slowed down due to this setback and the effect it had on team moral.
We decided to change two things 1st we bought a copper cooling coil to quickly cool the wort - the beer is called that before you add the yeast and it becomes beer - it is a very welcoming environment for wild yeast and bacteria, particularly when it is warm so it is important to cool it as quickly as possible after the boil.
The 2nd was using different yeast. We felt with the first two brews that fermentation had got off to a very slow start. You want it to start quickly to out compete and wild yeast or bacteria that might have snuck in while cooling the wort.
While I was in London Doug put on our third attempt . It is a three grain beer with barley, rice and sweetcorn. Our plan is that it is a cheap beer to make and is nice and light in taste, a good beer for every day (er not that we plan on drinking it *every* day of course), then we will make some more specialist (expensive!) beers for special occasions. We have just bottled it and it has escaped the blight of the first two. We are so happy! Of course something else can still go wrong, but at least we are making progress.
We need to make a few changes to the brewing process as the rice and sweetcorn had to be cracked and mashed before the main brew was started which took a couple of hours - on top of the 5 hours or more of the main brew this is quite a burden. If we get flaked corn and minute rice we can miss this step.
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