# White rabbit dark ale.



## hopparty (1/4/17)

Alright so I think I may have an issue. I purchased a kit to make a damn great dark ale. And stupidly rushed into make the whole thing without checking everything was in it. Turns out it was missing the British ale yeast. 

So my brew fermented wildly for the first couple of days and then stopped dead. Temperature is fine, but my starting gravity was 1.050, now the gravity is still sitting at 1.020. Now I'm pretty new to this but to me it doesn't seem right. Please help. This was an expensive kit I dont want a dud beer!


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## shacked (1/4/17)

Hmmm seems a little high. Did you use the kit yeast? Did you rehydrate the dry yeast before pitching? What was in your recipe? Are you controlling temp? How many days into fermentation are you?


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## Bribie G (1/4/17)

As shacked says, what yeast did you end up using? And exactly what kit + recipe?
1050 sounds a bit high for most kit and kilo brews, have you tried testing your hydrometer with plain water to make sure it's accurate?

Also are you relying on airlock to tell you how fast the fermentation is happening - provided the fermenter is sealed up ok it won't do any harm to leave it for a few more days to finish off.


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## hopparty (2/4/17)

I used the 5g brewers yeast. Didn't rehydrate it


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## Bribie G (2/4/17)

OK, Morgans kit. You shouldn't have any problems with the yeast under the lid, it's Mauribrew Ale yeast that a lot of the kits use and it's a good all round ale yeast. However you probably under-pitched the brew. Do you still have the british ale yeast? I wouldn't do any harm to rehydrate that and quickly slip it into the brew to clean up any fermentables still in there.

Provided you did all the right sanitising etc you should be fine.


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## hopparty (2/4/17)

No the British ale yeast didn't come in the kit. They must have left it out by accident. It's been sitting there for 16 days now. I added a spare bag of the Morgan's yeast that I had on Tuesday. Some I'm going to bottle today. The gravity has been steady the whole time now


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## Bribie G (2/4/17)

Sounds good, let's know how it turns out in a couple of weeks. Also on bottling, not the best idea to bottle a few at a time, you risk getting infections into the remaining beer.


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## hopparty (2/4/17)

Will do. Cheers


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## shacked (3/4/17)

Let us know how it goes.

Sounds like you didn't have enough yeast to start with mate. 5g is a bit light on. The Safale and Danstar yeast packs are up around 11.5g. 

Rehydrating is a really good idea as it helps get your yeast ready for action. Some say you loose roughly 50% of your yeast when you don't rehydrate. This is a simple video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL92Bd4kfbQ 

Also as an aside, that recipe doesn't look like the best for a WRDA type beer. I've had a crack at a WRDA all grain clone (5 attempts) and would be happy to adapt one into a simple kit, steeped grain and dry hopped version if you'd like. Let me know.


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## Bribie G (3/4/17)

Actually come to think of it, the second kit beer I ever did back in 2008 was a tin of Morgans Iron Bark dark and a tin of Morgans Liquid Malt Extract, it turned out excellent to my tastebuds at the time but a bit lacking in hop aroma - for a WRDA (drank gallons of it when I lived near the Bowling club at Old Bar) I would rather have doubled the finishing hops and not put in any extra bittering.

However the OP's recipe should be nicely drinkable anyway.


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