I would really appreciate some opinions on this one. I'll be as short as possible.

-brewed my first All grain beer, a centennial blonde ale, pitched the nottingham yeast and had no fermentation for the first 2.5 days.

-then dediced to re-pitch with a pack of Windsor that I had laying around

-fermentation started within 12 hours after the second pack being pitched

-long fermentation after that, like 5 or 6 days of airlock activity which seemed like a lot for a blonde

-I go to bottle today and things don't seem right. Here are the symptoms:

* supposed to finish at 1.008 and it's like 1.001
* super thin lining of Krausen on bucket- much thinner than usual
*TONS of sediment- I think a lot of yeast
*Super cloudy beer- left thick sediment deposits on the glass I sampled from
*Smelled a little grapey/cidery but not crazy strong or anything

And the biggest mystery of all?? I put in 5.5 gallons and when I bottled I was only able to fill 36 bottles. Where did the rest of the beer go? How could I possibly lose almost 1.5 of liquid? Where could it possibly go??

I have a theory that I'm curious about. I've gotten obsessed with brewing and because all my beer equipment was being used, I used my 6 gallon wine fermenting bucket.

It's just like the beer bucket except 1 gallon larger. Same lid/airlock. I'm anal about my cleaning and sanitizing but I'm wondering if trace amounts of metabisulfate or sorbate or something from doing wine, caused these problems.

I've had a couple people say that it could be cross contamination (using wine equipment for beer), but I've had more people tell me that they do both and have never had a contamination issue.

I tasted the beer and it tastes very plain and a little grapey. What do you think? Give it a chance in the bottle??

Too late actually I primed and bottled already, but what would be your best guess??

I guess no one else can figure this out either?

Sounds to me like you most likely got some wild yeast in there that would attenuate that far.
With the saccromyces not taking hold for some time this is more likely. It could also lead to the "cidery" taste you
speak of. Just my guess.

Chris

The fact that it fermented down to 1.001 tells me maybe there was some wine yeast or a bacteria at work. But that's just a guess...

You just might get a wonderful beer from a blended yeast experiment. Let us know how it turns out.

Re-listen to last week's show. Shea says that wine yeasts are mostly of the "killer" variety. All you need are a few and they are off to the races and they emit an enzyme that kills other yeasts.

You might want to get a new bucket. If it was used there are probably a lot of scratches in it that could have hidden the wild or wine yeast no matter how well you clean and sanitize it. That 2.5 day delay probably gave the wild yeast a head start and by the time you added the windsor it was too late. Typically you pitch yeast as fast as you can before anything wild starts growing and the yeast that you pitch out competes anything else.

low mash temp? that can make the wort more fermentable plus the wild yeast

+1 everyone.

Sounds like the yeast in the first pitch may have been dead or something happened to them after pitching. What was the wort temperature at pitching? 3 days before activity = contamination, probably wild yeast in your case.

The missing volume is probably all the sediment you describe.

Lose the wine bucket in any case. The only things I would use for both wine and beer are glass and stainless. You can be be as anal as JP in prison and you will never get plastic 100% sanitized if it has scratches, and it will have scratches if it has been used more than a few times.

5-6 days is not at all long for airlock activity.