How many batches have you ruined and how??

I scorched the heck out of an IPA this spring (left burner on under the mash tun between mash & sparging), and it still hasn't mellowed enough for me to like it. I believe it will be heading down the the drain as soon as I need some extra kegs, though my friends don't mind it as much. I just hate the flavor of scorch.

I've brewed maybe 150 batches or so, mostly 5gals and several 10gallon. The only batch that was undrinkable was because of too much ginger-root, and it was just horrible.

Never had an infection ruin anything, and any time I messed up fermentation temperature or mash temp or whatever, it just gave the beer character and was still drinkable. Maybe not contest winning quality, but always solid, drinkable beers.

My first batch is a Hefe....Has a decent taste but seems a little "watery"....Haven't figured out how to fix that yet.....Getting ready to bottle an "extract" kit...It came with all my equipment. Curious how that will turn out.

I've dumped one and once I get CO2 I'll know if I have to dump another. Both because of cidery taste. I hate dumping beer especially when what causes cidery tastes could be a number of things.

I had one batch of stout when I first started about 13 years ago with way too many roasted grains in it. It was as thick and black as oil and tasted like coffee grounds. First lager I ever did, I couldn't get the temperature down for the primary until several days in. Tasted terrible and it was full of fusels. I'm finishing a keg of Wit right now that was terrible when I first tapped it. Way too much coriander and I zested the oranges myself, getting a lot of pith in it (I'm a Chef so that's inexcusable). But after a couple of months it now tastes pretty good. So I guess the answer is 2 ruined batches in 13 years. Not all have been great but only 2 were dumped.

Okay, after several years I am ready to admit this. I went overboard with a batch. It was an extract pale to which I added way too much fresh ginger root and 4 oz of spruce essence. This stuff tasted the way a bar of Coast soap smells. Foul, but I did drink it as an object lesson to myself. :rockin:

Worst ever was wormwood.

Next worst was a Duvel clone with too much sugar that was very sweet and flat.

Next was a Barleywine that oxidized in a poorly sealed keg while aging.

Next was the smoked with waaaay too much smoked malts.

Least ruined of these was the winter warmer where I scorched the LME. Fortunately it was not too much out of place for the style.

Oh there was also that one where I forgot to treat the water for chlorine or else over oxygenated and the American Wheat was all clovey or something.

Oh yeah and the one where I tried to toss it a bunch of Xmas tree branches into the boil...but that was an experiment.

I guess I've botched more than I realize... LOL

3 finished extracts + one in bottles and a PM in primary and no bad ones yet.

DAMN. I just jinxed myself.....

Two. One was a smoked porter that I put way too much smoked malt in, nasty, tasted like a campfire. The other was a Tripel that just didn't attenuate enough and was cloyingly sweet to the point of undrinkable, it got dumped too.

Had 3 wild yeast infections in my first 16 batches including my first. Almost quit. Switched to Star San from Iodophor and have not had another one since in over a year.

I have 2. Well, really 1.2. My first ugly was my 3rd batch. A chocolate dry stout with 8 ounces of cocoa powder. I decided, last minute, to get a few bags of raspberries for secondary from the grocery store. I racked onto them without treating them first. I got some nasties. I tasted it and it did not taste all that bad but I dumped it scared.

The second was a nice hoppy 7% stout with 2 ounces of cocoa powder. It was a killer beer. I racked 1 gallon into mint leaves straight from the pkg. That one went fuzzy on me also. I rationalized the alcohol content for no treatment this time and it bit me again. I racked this one into another growler, chilled overnight then into my glass and it was a most excellent day. FWIW I also racked 1 gallon of it onto a few cups of port that I had left over from a racking....wow. The best beer in the neighborhood. Highly recommended.I’ve learned my lesson. Vodka and campden are cheap.

For the record I do not put cocoa powered in every batch and I brew other styles...

Hmmmm. I've been using Iodophor since I started brewing and never once have I had an infection. Maybe you just have become a better brewer with better overall sanitation and brewing processes? Just a thought, but I find Iodophor to be an excellent product and I don't get the excessive foaming that I find with Starsan. I know....the foaming does nothing to the beer profile or taste of the beer, but racking into a foamy carboy just wierds me out for some reason. My 2 cents.....

I go back and forth between Iodophor and Star San. I read an article years ago that recommended changing every once in awhile so that the baddies don't begin to tolerate one or the other. Don't know how true it is but I switch anyway. Star San foams, Iodophor stains, but I have never had an infection with either.

Well, I posted early just one. Now I need to add another. Ruined and IPA when I put a plastic wine thief into the kettle to take a pre-boil gravity reading...the wine thief came out soft and deformed. It didn't really "melt" so I kept going. Beer has been in primary for 2 weeks, just tasted it when I took a gravity sample....tastes like solvent. Must be the plastic.

I ruined my last porter by overcarbing. It won 2nd place in a competition early in its life but it is now a gusher (I suspect it didn't finish fermenting as it stopped at 1.020 even though I repitched, raised temp, etc). It still tastes good if I give it a chance in the glass but the mouthfeel is ruined.

I've actually overcarbed a few batches now so I think I'll just stick to the standard 4oz of priming sugar for a while.

I've only got 4 batches under my belt, but the third, a cider is so dry it's biting. Even after being back sweetened. I only made 3g. I'm thinking I might be able to save it, if I pasteurized it, and sweetened with something fairly mild. Maybe add some mulling spice to add tanins.

Oh man... I think I've had four or five dumpers in the past ten years...

The first was a cherry wheat. Nothing wrong with it but it taught me to keep fruit out of my beer. I just didn't like it. I drank about half of it before I couldn't stand it any more.

The second was a mild that got infected, in a not good way.

I tried to brew a lambic 5 years ago and it just didn't come out well - all sour, no funk. I probably could've salvaged it with some blending but it got dumped due to a cross country move.

The most recent were my first two attempts at using pilsner malt and lagering. One was a czech pilsner and the other a dortmunder export. I learned about DMS the hard way - extended, violent, uncovered boils are important. Wimpy stovetop boils that require the kettle be half covered just lead to cooked corn. No matter how long I let them sit it never went away. I wound up dumping them both at 2 years.

I haven't ventured back into the realm of pilsner malt since. I've never had a DMS problem with pale ale malt and I'm not well set up for lagers anyway.

2 so far,

The first was a bourbon barrel porter that I put 4 ounces of oak in for 2 weeks. Tastes like chewing on wood. I'm letting it sit for a year or so to see if it gets any better.

The second (lesson learned) was a waaaarm fermentation that turned my Haus pale ale into a banana bomb with all sorts of underlying off flavors. I dumped this one. Not exactly crisp, clean quaffable.

One true dumper. A Belgian quad where I (a) underpitched dramatically, and (b) pitched when the wort was 90 degrees. Solventy as hell. Undrinkable.

15 gallons lost to Hurricane Rita. *****.

Might have a dumper going this weekend. Mashed in the mid 140s and it looked like I had thrown flour into it with a chalky feel on the tongue. We'll see if 2 weeks of 32 degrees did anything today or tomorrow when I pull another sample.

2 Batches:
first one- Right when I started brewing I wrote down the recipe for a porter to go to the LHBS to buy but left off the chocolate malt. I ended up with something like a light amber. Not a terrible beer, just not close to a porter.

second one- A brown ale that I wasn't able to bottle for 10 months (sat in primary) due to time priorities and work. Although I'm not sure the problem was the extended primary. It tastes very strongly of yeast. Not esters, but straight up yeast. It's not what i've seen autolysis flavor to be described as so I'm not completely sure what the deal is. It's been bottle aging for 3 months now and only slightly improving.

Three dumpers so far in a year of brewing (about 10 batches):

1) 1st attempt at a Hoegaarden clone kit from ABS. Due to the fact that the ingredients were labeled opposite of the instructions (55 min boil vs 55 min mark), I added the bitter orange and paradise grains at the beginning instead of the end of the boil. It was horrible.

2) Fat Tire clone extract kit. Sour and gushing, tasted fine before bottling. Bottling wand was the culprit

3) Yet another Fat Tire clone (AG batch) sour, slightly gushing. Not sure why but I'm about to give up on this beer. I've brewed 3 great AG batches between the extract sour gusher and this AG batch with no issues, as well as 2 after with no issues. I guess this is just my Fat Tire curse.

One batch since I started, brewed 50 or so batches altogether. Totally my fault, first day of fermentation was in the mid 70s, ambient, so even warmer. Learned that lesson quick, if anything now, I obsess over providing ideal conditions for the yeast.

May be dumping today's batch , first nonsanitezed hop
bag 30 seconds till flame out ,along with forgetting to
put the chiller in ten min before flame out and have to
dunk it in star san right after flame out it was clean
this is it's second use , then coming up a gallon short
so i added a gallon of bottled water to already chilled
wort , to say I got a little distracted at the end would
be an understatement.

First and second batch ruined:

Our first all-grain day. We tried to do two all-grain batches in the same day. And this was our first time brewing beers from our own imagination - not brewing from someone else's tried-and-true recipe. And to compound problems, we decided to do two very small (1 gallon, net) batches since we knew we didn't know what we were really doing.

Since the batches were so small, we lost a LOT of temperature in 5-gallon our mash tun. Like...120-140° exiting mash temps. Ouch. We didn't do a starch conversion test. We didn't really understand the batch sparging process. The recipes we made were all wrong. Our specialty grains were way too high in percentage to where they should have been. The result was two really bad beers. But we didn't dump them. They're still sitting in my friend's basement. We're planning on cracking them open on New Year's Day and attempting to drink them. Maybe they're not ruined. We'll find out in a couple of weeks.

One batch we definitely ruined was a honey brown ale. We tried to use a SS hop filter (similar to what Bobby M made in his videos), but we tried to use it with our new keggle instead of our old tri-clad pot. The pot has built-in defenses against scorching malt - the keggle is not forgiving in that department. We believe the LME dropped right into the SS mesh filter and stayed there, ignoring our attempts at stirring the LME up. It ended up being horribly scorched, and there is a very pronounced smoky flavor to the beer now. We have a keg of it waiting to be dumped out. We will probably never get around to drinking it.

"I´ve riuned", and I am writing the sentence in quotes because it was the yeast I used in each one of those batches. It was one of these yeast some people sell in bulk after reproducing one yeast strain.

All those beers were sour and 3 of them had what I think is Brett infection. This yeast took as long as 24 hours to show any sign of activity and I think it gave a chance to bacteria and other yeasts to play a part in the fermentation.

It was a costly lesson.

One batch of Kolsch. I fermented too warm. Before I had temp controlled chest freezers, I used a cooler with water bottles. It was the middle of July. Not good. I drank some of it, but couldn't finish it.

Two batches, an imperial stout that my buddy did the recipe on, he refused to believe me when I said he called for too much roasted malt...tasted like an ashtray.

A pale ale that that blow off bung came detached, massive acetaldehyde.

Possible a third as a quad stalled out at 1.036 so I tossed in some funk and a bunch of blackberries. Its been sitting for a year so I should probably taste it and see if it is a go/no go.

1 saison. Tried to put cucumbers in it. They broke down too much, beer tasted like dirt.

One, a hazelnut brown ale. Put 2 bottles of artificial hazelnut extract in it.

Tried it, hated it.

Let it sit for about 6 months, still couldn't taste any beer under the blanket of blatantly artificial hazelnut taste. Dumped that fugger.

still get kinda queasy remembering that smell/taste.

Two. Both Octoberfests before I realized that they are lagers and really need temp control.

Had one go sour from being too impatient and checking way too often, had one gush from what I suspect was an old bottling bucket spigot, and then left one in primary for about 8-10 weeks that got this horrible yeast flavor that just didn't age out. That one was a bummer.

3: 2 English browns and one chocolate stout. If my 3rd EB attempt goes south, I'm giving up on it.

I've had to dump two batches. Both because of scorching in the kettle, due to a grain bill with a large percentage of wheat used in conjunction with a #40 mesh hop basket. The proteins in the wort clogged the mesh, causing the wort under the basket to become somewhat stationary and burn.

Solved this problem by switching to #30 mesh and to a hop spider basket configuration instead of a basket that sits on the bottom of the kettle.

Ruined my 1st AG batch. It was an IPA that I let ferment at 72F and it ended up being overpowering with esters and fusel alcohols.

Then more recently I ruined an amber ale bc I direct fire my mash and I forgot the burner was on and my mash hit 175 30 minutes in. Needless to say FG was not quite where it should have been.

Had a carboy that had, as it turned out, a crack in it that infected a few (3?) batches very early on (late 80s). Had 1 other that got infected around '92, acetobacter for sure. That's all I can think of on the home level... commercially I had a beer that had pretty high DMS once, that was a mechanical issue; boiler was about to die and I thought I could get one more brew out of it. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Never got a strong boil and the beer suffered. It was a 100% 2row, 1.044 light ale so the DMS was pretty glaring. I got some blackberry extract and threw it in, then blended it with another beer and the result was actually pretty good.

I've dumped at least 5 batches. Mostly because of yeast handling crimes/pitch temperature on one of them.

1 batch was nasty and I dumped it and the fermenter too...I'm not sure what went wrong with that one, except to say that about the time I brewed that beer I was using 5.2 and accidentally dumped way to much in at one point and thought "hmm..we'll see what that does to the beer". So it coulda been that.

I don't use 5.2 anymore ftr...but that's not why.

One patch of cider.

A couple of early all grain pale ales that suffered from low efficiency and low mash temp, and tasted like Coors; a mild that became really tart and unpleasant from fermenting too high; and a cherry porter that I bottled too soon, resulting in bottle bombs; oh, and a quick cider that didn't get fully pasteurized, and also blew up a couple bottles. Ugh! That's a lot of dumpers.