https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-1451
The broker does not become available due to being stuck in an infinite loop while electing leader. This can be recognised by the following line being repeatedly written to server.log:
[2014-05-14 04:35:09,187] INFO I wrote this conflicted ephemeral node [{"version":1,"brokerid":1,"timestamp":"1400060079108"}] at /controller a while back in a different session, hence I will backoff for this node to be deleted by Zookeeper and retry (kafka.utils.ZkUtils$)