Should I bother to bottle it?

Went to bottle 2.5 gallons of an Oberon clone I made 2 weeks ago and it looked, smelled and tasted nasty. I've done half a dozen batches or so and have never had one turn out like this. Is there any point in bottling it or should I cut my losses and dump it now?

what kind of nasty? hot? sour? burnt? metallic? bleach?

It smelled kinda sour. After reading the "infected?" thread I'm pretty sure my batch got infected as his description matches what's going on with mine and I'm just going to dump this batch.

I would never dump a batch until it had been fully fermented, bottled, carbed, and conditioned. I've had batches where even the nastiest off flavors mellowed out given 2-3 months conditioning time. If I were you, I'd finish the beer, throw it in a closet, and forget about it until New Years. The extra 1-2 hours of work and 2-3 months of patience will likely save the batch.

TopherM said:

I would never dump a batch until it had been fully fermented, bottled, carbed, and conditioned. I've had batches where even the nastiest off flavors mellowed out given 2-3 months conditioning time. If I were you, I'd finish the beer, throw it in a closet, and forget about it until New Years. The extra 1-2 hours of work and 2-3 months of patience will likely save the batch.

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If it's a soured hoppy beer, I wouldn't even bother.

Does it have a white bubbly floaty skimmy layer over the top?

only $6.50 for brettomyces from white labs... I would build starter, save half because this may never be usable again and you know you will eventually infect a beer, or at least this would be a good excuse to start thinking about it, add the other half to this, wait the 3-6 months it takes for the brett to take over the lacto, and see what you have.

This could be a rare gem. Or something fun to give to your friends.

I bottled a nasty batch before and 6 months later it was not great but was at least drinkable. If anything, bottle it so you can learn from it. If you get the same thing again someday, then you will better know what to do with it. You won't lose anything but some time by giving it a try, and if you dump it now you will never know.

I bottled an infected batch one time...at bottle time it nearly made me ralph. Several months later it still sucked, so I dumped it all.

The extra effort to be certain it was no good was worth it. Even though mine never turned the corner it was nice to know for sure that it was no good.

bottle it - you never know.

I just bottled a Rye that came out very sour. Not sure where I screwed up, but I figured what the heck. I do small batches so it's only 8 bottles this time. There was a lot of trub and a lot of sediment still floating in the fermenter.

Left over in a glass is clearing out and the stuff on top is still sour, but it tastes a bit better than when it had all the "stuff" floating in it. Time will tell.

i know dumping beer is frowned upon here but i say dump it. i wasted more than a few hours bottling beers that tasted bad right off the bat then dumping them anyway 3-4 months later.

You could bottle just 12 or so of them, and dump the rest. Who knows, age might help a lot.

bovineblitz said:

If it's a soured hoppy beer, I wouldn't even bother.

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+ 1

I just dumped an amber ale that had soured. The mix of hoppy and sour is foul. But I have a belgian pale that has soured wich may turn out quite nice. I'll give it half a year before i think about dumping.

I have to sort out my sanitation but at least i know what infected beer tastes like.

It was only 2.5 gallons so I went ahead and dumped it. After thinking about it I'm pretty sure it was something with the bucket. I tried doing a hard lemonade in it awhile ago that came out nasty as well. I guess that's what I get for being cheap and using free buckets from the supermarket bakery.

yah, I am over most of plastic even if is brew buckets...

from now on, only better bottles, glass, or stainless(fermenting in kegs now!)