Knowing if a Beer has been Spoilt

I was just wondering how you can tell if a batch has been spoilt. I had doubts about a brew recently when I could only get the boil up to 65C because of a problem with the equipment. The beer tastes bad but I dont know if it because I used 125g black patent or if it is due to other bacteria than the actual yeast. So is there any other way of identifying a spoilt bacth other than just bad taste? If you drink a beer that has been spoilt does this present any sort of risk to my health?

What kind of bad taste are you tasting? Can you describe the flavor you're finding unfavorable?

The worse you'll get from drinking "bad" beer are diarrhea and stomach aches.

If your beer tastes like rancid vinegar.. it might be spoiled...

If your beer bottles have a ring around the inside of the neck... then you may have an infection...

If your beer grows legs and walks around the room... it may perchance be spoiled...

If your beer is fuzzy... it may possibly be spoiled...

If your beer could be used as a replacement for penicillin... It might maybe be harboring an infection...

If you have to hold your nose, just to sip it down... there's a chance that it might be spoiled.


Sorry, I couldn't resist.

If you set a beer aside in secondary for awhile, and you disinfected everything and cleaned it properly, how long until it spoils, or will it even spoil within a couple months?

Also, is it normal for a few things to be floating on top? They are not fuzzy like mold, and are the color of the yeast sediment at the bottom. So is it just yeast that clumped together and floats? (I used a dry yeast from a kit)

It actually looks and smells just fine. But the taste, well it is difficult to describe since just saying that it tastes "bad" isnt all that descriptive. But a real sour tangy flavor is quite accurate.

I don't believe there's anything in there that could do you any real harm. Not knowing your recipe, a sour flavor certainly sound like infection to me. I suppose it could also be funky yeast. What was the recipe?

cdew4545....most likely what you're seeing are indeed clumps of yeast and/or clusters of bubbles. In a clean environment, I think a beer would keep for a helluva long time. It'd get stale long before it went bad.

My beer recipe was very simple:

3kg Pale
250g Crystal
125g Black Patent

I have a giant kettle type of thermostatically controlled boiler. Adding the grains directly to the kettle causes scorching just like I suspected would happen.

I dont think i'll be using black patent again after this. If anybody does want to use it, like only 50g max should be used.

This batch is too bad to drink. Infection or no infection (although I think that it is infected) the batch simply tastes TOO BAD and cannot be consumed.

cant possibly be worse than the shwill my friends drink

"I could only get the boil up to 65C". Is this correct? That would be a temp. used for mashing and would have very little thermal pasteurization properties. According to my magic eight ball the outlook is not so good.

Alright the temperature would have been hotter than that but the taste is so awful that I am lead to the conclusion that the batch must have been spoilt.