have you ever intentionally made a "bad" beer?

with the popularity of SMASH beers and people splitting batches to try different yeasts etc., I am wondering if anybody has intentionally made a batch to see what something tastes like. Ever made a beer with a mash 170F+ to test for astringency or fermented in the upper 70s so you know what esters to look for?

there are tons of things i take as general knowledge that i know not to do, but i haven't actually tried them for myself, so i don't know if my beer is astringent, fermented too hot, or if i used to much crystal malt or whatever.

anybody done a batch intentionally wrong to be able to detect issues in future brews?

I've made enough mistakes just naturally that I've never needed to make one on purpose, lol.

I have brewed several batches with odd recipe formulations designed to tell me what a particular ingredient or combination of ingredients tastes like. While I'll never brew those beers again, I don't think of them as mistakes.

I brewed a small batch of a simple extract pale ale with baker's yeast (Fleishmann's Rapid Rise) to see how bad it would be. Turns out it wasn't bad at all! Perfectly drinkable beer. Someday I'll inoculate a small batch with a sourdough starter I've recently begun growing.

I still am unintentionally making my mistakes. The first PM batch last month ended up being gushers . Some people are trying to ferment with wild yeast/bacteria, consider that no problem for me .

I've pulled out small samples of wort, hours after the yeast is mixed in and let it ferment upwards of 75 degrees while the rest of the batch is temperature controlled in the appropriate range for the yeast. I've done it with US-05, Nottingham, WLP001, and a few of the wheat/Hefe strains. The temperature controlled batch was alway much better than the uncontrolled sample. I never saw it through to the the final, carbonated product, but I didn't mind tossing those samples after tasting them once they were done fermenting.

I brewed a wheat beer with bulgur from the grocery store. Did a cereal mash and pureed it with an immersion blender. Then inoculated it with yeast I found fermenting a glass of beer I left on the counter after flushing a keg line. Stepped it up a few times. As close to bad as I dare do deliberately.

The BJCP will give you a kit of brews with single flaws for free to help you study exactly what those flaws look/taste like. It's free once you are scheduled and paid for a BJCP judge exam. Much cheaper than intentionally brewing 5 gallons with a flaw!

http://www.bjcp.org/cep/kits.php

TopherM said:

The BJCP will give you a kit of brews with single flaws for free to help you study exactly what those flaws look/taste like. It's free once you are scheduled and paid for a BJCP judge exam. Much cheaper than intentionally brewing 5 gallons with a flaw!

http://www.bjcp.org/cep/kits.php

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That's a pretty cool idea. Dogfish had something like that on Brewmasters so they could detect problems with their beer.

I don't have enough time or money to deliberately mess up a batch or even make it a little worse than the best I can make it.