DIY Brewing Company

Recipes 

I think it bears stating that you might be making good beer but making not great beers. This takes me back to my first brew 6 years ago which was an Oatmeal stout. I gave it everyone I could find and thought it was the best beer in the world. Now looking back at the moment I bet it wasn't good at all and definitely had some major flaws. The rosy glasses you wear when you are tasting your own beer has a huge amount to do in your perception of the beer.
So to make good beer is really easy. TO make great beer is extremely hard. And to make bad beer is way easier then you think. ( Unless you are a blender everyone makes a bad batch)
I would have to say I brew almost every weekend and I still have batches that I am extremely disappointed in. They might not be bad beers ( no flaws) but they are also not my usual great beers. I have never dumped a batch yet but I definitely have made beer that I am not proud of.

malkore

Recipes 

closest I came was making a good Kolsch, and then having the keg leak, apparently didn't purge the headspace enough, and it got horribly oxidized during a 3 hour trip to a party, and then back home.

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Malkore
Primary: English Mild
On tap: Pale Ale, Lancelot's Wheat, English Brown Ale, Steam Beer, HoovNuts IPA
Bottled: MOAM, Braggot, Raspberry Melomel, Merlot, Apfelwein, Pyment, Sweet mead, Cabernet
Gal in 2009: 27, Gal in 2010: 34, Gal in 2011: 13, Gal in 2012: 10

DeathBrewer

Recipes 

i've made a couple of session beers that i mashed at high temperatures and used nottingham to ferment out. big maltiness + dry beer = fail

they didn't taste that good and i didn't realize what it was at first. my next batch, i'm going with a lower attenuating yeast and a lower mash temp. that should leave it nice and flavorful without that overbearing dryness. should add some nice fruitiness too.

other than that, i've had some bad experiences with using too much of something: acid malt, honey malt, honey, hops in the wrong style, but everything has been drinkable.

i'd say, yes, it's hard to make bad beer unless you're trying (and some of my experiments could probably be considered "trying" )

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Easy Partial Mash Brewing - Stovetop All-Grain Brewing

"Death is always with us." - Brewpastor

We will remember...

Ooompa Loompa

Recipes 

I made some beers that weren't very good (could even be called bad I guess, but I still drank them all, so they weren't terrible) when I first started out and thought that I knew it all and formulated some off the wall recipes that just did not work well.

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Primary: Apfelwein, Irish Stout
Secondary: Nada
Bottle conditioning: Centennial IPA
Drinking: Super Shpadoinkle Blonde Ale

lifthatiron

Recipes 

I recently made an australian lager and right while it was cooling after the boil with the wort chiller in the fermentation vessel I dropped the thermometer in. I dropped it into a 25 gallon fermenter. I couldnt retrieve it with my stir paddle and no tongs were long enough. I didnt want it to sit in there and rust, or leak stuff into my beer, so i ended up washing my arm as best as possible and reached in and grabbed it. The batch turned out great. Delicious beer.

Amiaji

Recipes 

I'm still new to brewing and my first few batches were disapointing. However tonight I opened a bottle from my very first batch that was bottled a little over 3 months ago. Man what a difference! As has been said on here many times time heals all things beer. Only complaint I have with it now is I only have 4 bottles of it left.

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A Keezer is Born

Beer is for drinking,
Homebrew is for sharing.

neuron555

Recipes 

I suspect we all make mostly decent beers. It's hard to be worse than BMC, but it's true that we all think our own children are the smartest, cutest, etc. Some of my batches have been just what I was after, and some are probably fine, but weren't what I expected. I also have to keep reminding myself to be patient - the last 6 pack seems to be the best, and then it's gone.

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"Better Living Through Chemistry"

Neuron Nanobrewery

Area51BrewCo

Recipes 

Following other peoples tried and proven methods and recipes will lead you to good beer most of the time. However, formulating your own recipes and experimenting with exoctic ingredients often leads me to dissapointing beer.

I have even tried to make my own styles of beer some have ended up exactly what i wanted with me saying "I have no idea what this is but I like it." That is how most styles were formed and I don't care much for following other "guidelines" if they don't meet my expectations. An example is with a recently formulated Oktoberfest. I think the ceiling on the OG for the beer is to low and I went well over it at around the 1.065 mark.

We'll see how they turn out !!!!

mew

Recipes 

It's easy to make drinkable beer if you like a wide range of beer styles. The difficult part is ending up with the exact beer you intended to make. I make plenty of beers that taste great, but were nothing like my original plan. Mostly for me I get the attenuation wrong.