How hard is it to make bad beer?

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gigidogg

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Please, stories welcome.

I have been doing AG for about a year now. I have some of the classic issues, eg low efficiency at times, missing my mash temp, desire for more and better equipment (read SWMBO fiscal responsibility lectures), and I have yet to make a beer that is not good if not excellent. Am I just gifted? Please, somebody knock me off my pedestal.:cross:

P.S. May be it's the 3 month old Saison talking. Who knows. 7.6% and clean does make for an entertaining night of brewing.
 
It's pretty difficult unless you try to do something wacky. I added coffee to a recent beer. I should have paid more attention to the methods described but tried something different. I have a keg full of carbonated coffee.
 
I decided to design my own stout for my 3rd AG recipe. It tasted like liquid smoke, with some charcoal mixed in, so I dumped it. That was the only batch I have ever dumped. I have had a couple of so-so recipes in the past couple years. ALL OF MY SO-SO RECIPES HAVE INVOLVED THE OVERADDITION OF HIGHLY KILNED GRAINS!!!!! Just so I am clear, read the previous sentence again, out loud. When I am using base grains, and anything else under 120L, things just seem to turn out good to great. The only exception the So-So rule above was when I primed a batch with pure Maple Syrup. Either Charlie P. was wrong, or the syrup was boiled down more than normal, but when you pour a glass, there is 3/4 foam.
 
Please, somebody knock me off my pedestal.:cross:

I don't think the pedestal is that high and there are a lot of us on it anyway. Brewing beer is just not that hard. At least brewing good beer isn't. The only real challenge I could imagine would be those who try to brew the same recipe time after time and reach a consistant color, taste, mouthfeel, ABV, etc.

But just brewing good beer? That's easy IMHO.
 
The only way you can make a bad beer is if you have picky tastebuds and don't like the warm sensation of alcohol passing through your body. It's ALWAYS all good.
 
...I have yet to make a beer that is not good if not excellent. Am I just gifted? Please, somebody knock me off my pedestal.:cross:

I think I finally screwed the pooch on a batch recently. I was doing one of Jamil's recipes and thought "hey, these ingrediants look out of whack. I will adjust the snot out of them". Nice, huh?

The execution is fine (no off-flavors introduced by technique or sanitation) but at the 3rd carbing week it doesn't taste like something I want to drink 5gals of. Maybe time will help. I'll keep it around.

Note to onlookers: make any new recipe by the book first, THEN adjust to taste.
 
Define bad. I made a light ale for the wussy drinkers and found it to be like water, no flavor, no nothing, little abv. I forced myself to drink that crap just to make sure I remembered how bad it was. I think the lesson will stick. I've gotten pretty adventurous with making recipes up, it always comes out as beer. Just a matter of what you're expectations are. A lot harder to screw up ag, at least in the sense of abv. It will still taste great. My first IRA 6-7 years ago that I brewed without the buddy that taught me to homebrew had very low abv as I screwed up the sparge. Tasted fantastic though, so I didn't consider it a total screw up or bad beer at all, just had to work hard to get a buzz. :D
 
I have a keg full of carbonated coffee.

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL BREAKFAST BEER!
How does that go with steak and eggs?


I'd say that as long as you at least loosely follow GABP (Generally Accepted Brewing Procedures) and some marginally reasonable recipe structure....you are about 98% likely to produce beer. There is also the pride factor in drinking what you made. But I'd bet you are....like a lot of us....making pretty good beer.
 
There's a difference between making a bad tasting beer, and ruining it...and it's hard to ruin (i.e. infect for the lurking n00bs) but it is pretty easy to make dissapointing batches. It's like cooking, you can easily have an unbalanced batch, or a batch with too much of one or more ingredients, like 'mus and Wable mentioned...or using a yeast that produces flavors you don't want in your beer.

But I wish I could press the idea of the difficulty to actually ruin a batch...I mean, all of us at one time or another have dropped a grommet or something in our fermentor, or stuck an unsanitized body part in...or forgot to sanitize their wine theif once, splashed hot wort, has had a siphon break, or done some other bonehead move, and usually the beer STILL turns out fine...
 
I think what homebrewers say about there beer is mostly subjective and almost entirely dependent on their beer experience before they started home brewing. So no, you may not be on a pedestal, but then again, I have a very hard time believing that all your beers are good, great, or fantastic. Unless you have found the secret to recipe calculation that yields great beers on the first try every time, I would guess that most of your beers are average, and you have brewed 1 or 2 really good batches. If you have somehow managed to brew a great beer every time you set up shop, you should consider going pro because there are only a handful of people in the world who are able to do so. Not to be a downer, but some n00b might be reading this and thinking he will start brewing something incredible that will be better than anybeer he has had so far. It just isn't that likely, unless you haven't drank a wide variety of beers so your expectations start low.

See this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/my-first-brew-expectations-vs-results-77632/
 
If you have somehow managed to brew a great beer every time you set up shop, you should consider going pro because there are only a handful of people in the world who are able to do so.

I am not sure I agree. There are loads of successful brewpubs and many micros that I feel make very mediocre beer. That all being said, I agree with the general sentiment that most guys are brewing good beer for the most part, and only a few make stellar beer for the most part on occasion. I liken it to eating at Joe's vs. eating at I dunno Le Bernardin or something. Sure Joe's might have really good food that satisfies. But if you want a work of artistic creation, it takes a little more.

'Brewing to Style' is the safest bet. It's when you go off the beaten path and really stretch your wings that you find what you're made of. That's why I always recommend that new brewers first learn the basics and brew a well known style of their own interpretation.

AG is much harder as there is a lot more that can mess you up, but then again with extract you'll never get the full flavor and body of AG.
 
I like how sometimes are worst mistake or situation, sometimes ends up producing the best beer. A guy on another thread mentioned he racked from under some mold, and didn't have much hope for the beer. And it turned out to be one of his best tasting batches ever.
 
Honestly I have to say that if you are the only one who is drinking it then hopefully you are brewing to your flavor style which you enjoy. I have been to a ton of brewpubs that have very mediocre beer, as well as big companies. BUT, they are selling beer because someone apparently enjoys it.

My first batch (which I am still drinking) I have come accustomed to, however my girlfriend still avoids it like the plague. Are my tastebuds fooling me like a mother for her kids painting (it is the best in the group), or is my girlfriend just crazy. Granted the first beer we tried was about four days into carbing and she still has that taste in her mouth so...

When I got into this I thought that I would have to sacrifice a goat and pray to the gods in order to have a beer come out right. Turns out that when you do stick an unsanitized body part in, all still turns out well!
 
I like how sometimes are worst mistake or situation, sometimes ends up producing the best beer. A guy on another thread mentioned he racked from under some mold, and didn't have much hope for the beer. And it turned out to be one of his best tasting batches ever.


I understand that one. My Drunk Owl Mango started off as a Duvel clone and due to carbonation issues I ended up carefully opening each bottle and emptying into a bucket with mangos and the dregs from some Orval bottles. One year latter it was incredible.

back to the OP
It is easy to make good beer, a little more difficult to make great repeatable beers and extremely easy to make bad beer.
Try making a small batch and don't clean anything well, pet your dog while he's standing right next to your open fermenter or leave some old fruit near your fermenters to attract fruit flies.
I think you get what I'm saying
If you are lax on sanitation bad beers are very easy to make
 
Way back when, when I brewed my first batch of extract beer I was impressed. Why? Because it was beer. Very drinkable, too, if I might add.

Since then, I have had good batches, and not so good ones. Only one dumper. (For some reason it just didn't fully ferment and it went bad).

In general, though, I think that most of us find that if you practice good sanitation habits and can follow simple directions, you will normally end up with pretty darn good brews.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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" :D)
 
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.
 
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.
 
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. :(
 
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.
 
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 !!!!
 
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.
 
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