Hey Mick,
No, not at all, never went over 28 and has been sitting on 24ish.
I'm not sure what the temperature "de rigeur" was when you used to do HB, but the consensus now is that ale yeasts should be fermented ideally at between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius. Not that 24-28 degrees is outrageously high, but it would explain why the yeast has gone off like a frog in a sock....
Without going through other threads to find out, you'll probably find that the kit yeast with those Cooper's Lager kits is either a proper lager yeast (in which case the ideal ferment temperature is between 10 and 12 degrees) or a combination of both lager and ale yeasts. Either way it would be too high for the yeast to perform adequetely, and your yeast would have ripped through all your fermentables.
The only thing I can think of is I used two packets of yeast, being a double brew.
Overpitching would not have helped your cause here either. One yeast sachet would have been ample. Btw, I'm not sure where you are getting your HB supplies but you can get quality dry yeast sachets for about $4-$5 that will completely run rings around the yeasties that are under the kit lid.
The fact that the vast majority of your fermentables in your brew were simple sugars (ie the malts in the kit and the dex) would have contributed to the fast fermentation as this is perfect yeast food. I can imagine they would have been having an absolute field day....
Tell me is it likely its infected?
To answer this, I'll refer to your other post...
Oh yes and I had to stick my hand in it (sanitised of course) to retrieve the grommet.
As much as you'd like to think you've sanitised your hand, I would pretty well put everything I've got on saying that it probably hasn't got rid of every bug you need to kill to keep your beer/wort infection free. You'd have to do something similar to a surgical scrub-up in order to get this right. The more sensible thing would have been to leave the airlock removed, cover it with glad wrap/bottle cap/other barrier and wait it out. As part of her uni training, a nurse friend of mine had to dip her hands in a UV die and then clean her hands as thoroughly as possible. It was pretty amazing how much dye there was left on her hands when she held them back up to a UV light after she had spent a good 5 - 10 mins scrubbing away at her hands. What hope have you got of getting rid of all the bugs in and around your fingernails/creases/knuckle joints??
What was the brew size? Did you take an OG reading before pitching the yeast? I'd be tempted to wait some more time in order for this brew to fully ferment out, which you can tell has happened because you get stable SG readings over a three day period. At least if you decide to bottle up this brew you won't be wondering about whether you have a batch of bottle bombs waiting to go off. :unsure:
IMHO you may or may not have stuffed up this brew, but either way you can probably chalk this one up to re-experiencing the process. If you do decide to bottle it you'll probably find it will take a while to come good in the bottle, and even then it probably won't be the quality of brew that is going to scoop the pool at any competition any time soon. Reacquaint yourself with some of the different threads (esp the airlocked ones at the top of the Kits and Extracts page) for some good advise and hopefully your next brew turns out better than this one! :icon_cheers:
Looking at SB's post, I'd say that for all the things that could have been done differently you'll more than likely have something that you can drink and get drunk from. If all else fails, empty out the bottles and get that next brew going!!! :beerbang: