Is there an easy way to tell when to punt?

I haven't been brewing for very long. Six months maybe. Since I started I've been looking for an answer to this question. In books, on websites, this forum, can't find one. So I'll ask - given the time it takes to ferment, rack, bottle, store - is there an easy way to tell that something has gone wrong (unfortunately I do not own a crystal ball)? The earlier in the process the better. My reason for asking is simple. Quite a bit of time and effort goes into this process. Now if I didn't enjoy it, I quite simply wouldn't do it. BUT, it would be nice to know if there were a few things to watch out for when brewing. That way I wouldn't have to wait a month to tell my beer sucks, throw it out, and start all over again. I could simply throw it out and start over again.

Answers, links, referrals to other resources...all would help.

Thank you in anticipation of your responses.

I think the answer is that you should never dump you beer until you have tasted it and can tell that it has gone bad. You almost certainly will not know something is wrong much before bottling, so why wouldn't you just bottle it up and let the beer sit for a while? All you are out is the time it took to bottle and the cost of some bottles. Seems like a gamble worth taking at that point.

There really isn't a single answer to this question. There are so many variables - personal tastes, recipes, time, various offflavors, patience, expectations, etc. Even some infected beers turn out fantastic. I think only experience can give you your answer since ultimately you will have to decide if something is worth drinking or giving more time or dumping.

Learn what clean beer tastes like coming out of the fermenter. This takes time, but like any skill, is one that you can develop. I think if you can spot an off flavor before bottling or kegging, you can save yourself some heart ache down the line.

Granted, this is easier said than done when new to the hobby, but can be accomplished in a beer log with tasting notes through out each batch. Most infections will occur during the fermentation process, so you should be looking for perceived failures coming out of that are of the process.

As always, practice and learn good sanitary process and you will eliminate the majority of issues

A lot of variables in play here. My take is that if you put in the time, money and effort to make a brew, then follow through to the end. A good example is a brew I did where I some how got the ingredients mixed up and made something that was no great. After bottling it was a MEH brew at best, not very good. I put the bottles at the back of the place I store my brews and totally forgot about them, for many months. After I found them again, I put a few in the fridge to taste them. Guess what? It turned out to be a great beer, just not what I was expecting when I brewed it.

If after a long time in bottles it still does not taste good, then make the decision to call in DR. Jack.

Don't punt. Ever. If it sucks, put the bottles back in the closet and revisit it in a few months.

If you're worried about tying up your fermenter or bottles with a crummy beer, you don't have enough fermenters or bottles.

If you're worried about tying up your fermenter or bottles with a crummy beer, you don't have enough fermenters or bottles.

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So true...

I've only ever dumped one. It was my sole attempt at a GF beer. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong but it was horribly astringent.

I had one beer I ended up giving it all away. I didn't like it much but I had coworkers who loved it.

I had one beer that was my first attempt at a black lager. I missed the OG horribly bad and it got a bottle Brett infection from a previous pLambic. I didn't toss it.

More_Hops_Please said:

Don't punt. Ever. If it sucks, put the bottles back in the closet and revisit it in a few months.

If you're worried about tying up your fermenter or bottles with a crummy beer, you don't have enough fermenters or bottles.

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I totally understand if you do have the equipment to tie up with sub par beer, but some of us don't. In my limited experience I've been able to tell around a month after bottling whether something was worth hanging onto or not. I've kept around a 6 pack of the two dumpers that I've had and even over a year down the road they were not pleasurable to drink. Sometimes there is no point of hanging on to it. When exactly is hard to say, as it would even vary from person to person.

There seem to be so many variable that can negatively affect the outcome. All you can do is what you can do.

Things you can do:

* Make sure you are getting fresh ingredients: If you don't trust your LHBS LME, buy DME (longer shelf life) *OR* buy we'll reviewed ingredient kit from one of the big online shops.
* Use the full boil method. Boil some water for an hour to figure how much you boil off. Use that info to know what volume of liquid to start with (see below).
* Use the appropriate cleaner/sanitizer & follow correct procedure: I use PBW mixed in HOT tap water to soak, clean & scrub; StarSan to sanitize.
*. Speaking of water - make sure your water profile isn't going to cause problems (search this site for Water Chemistry)
* Ensure you pitch enough healthy yeast. Instead of complicating things with starters, just use rehydrated dry yeast.
* Control fermentation temps. If you have a basement that stays in the low 60s, that prolly is the easiest. Otherwise search "swamp cooler" for the next cheap/easy solution.
* Follow recommended bottling procedures. I think Revvy has a sticky in the bottling/kegging forum. But buy a Jet Carboy/Bottle Washer, a vinator & a bottle tree.
* Be patient. it takes upward of 6 weeks before your drinking.

My recommendation now would be to start small. Seriously. You may not have a pot large enough for boiling 6.5 gals of liquid for a 5 gallon batch. There is nothing wrong with scaling a recipe in half to 2.5 gals, or even down to 1 gallon!

Focus on the same tried, true & tested recipe until it comes out how it was supposed to using the suggestions above.

If you have problems with any of the points above along the way, check back & more help will be given.

To quote the great Commander Peter Quincy Taggart: "Never give up, never surrender"

More_Hops_Please said:

Don't punt. Ever. If it sucks, put the bottles back in the closet and revisit it in a few months.

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This is so true! I've found that stuff I wouldn't even call beer is awesome a few months later. Perfect example is my chocolate apple stout. It's terrible until its been aging for at least a year, but it's worth the wait. ( by terrible, I mean it's so bad you wouldn't even swallow it. DISGUSTING even)

Thank you for all your responses. But if you'll allow me, I'd like to make a comment. For a number of reasons I mostly read online editions of newspapers. More interesting than most articles, however, are the comments to those articles posted by readers. The vast majority of the comments I read, whether in a local or national newspaper, are mean spirited and hateful. Rarely is there any insight one might expect in a well thought out comment. Maybe I'm naive but I am constantly amazed at the spiteful and ignorant comments I see. Notice that I never claimed the people making these banal comments are spiteful, ignorant, or mean spirited (they could be - I don't know) but their COMMENTS most certainly are.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is this site. I have posted a number of questions here, most of them ignorant. I try my best to experiment, read, ask questions of my local home brew shop, etc. before posting a question here. But sometimes I've got no where else to turn. Every time, every single time, I have received thoughtful, extremely helpful responses. I feel certain that in some cases posters were tempted to respond - "you are a moron, take up another hobby". But no one ever has. Even in jest. And I appreciate that. You all have renewed my faith in America. And I'm not being facetious.

It's all trial and error, but mostly it's the advise from others that help you pull it together. I think that most of the people drawn to this hobby are a different breed. I've met one or two jerks out of hundreds of people. Those are pretty good odds.

Just my .02 but, you are being very generalized in your question. What I mean by this is what type of beer are you brewing ? for example what may be a "problem" in a red ale may not be a problem for a Berliner weisse. I'm going to answer assuming you are brewing "normal beers ie. IPA, Stout, Porters etc..... here's your first sign something is wrong.... no krausen forms. next would be a pellicle forming or mold etc. on top of the wort. third would be take a gravity reading has your reading barely moved ? maybe you have a attenuation problem because you mashed too high etc. Next would be taste the sample does it taste like rubbing alcohol maybe you produced fusel alcohol by overpitching or keeping the wort to hot for the yeast strain. there is no easy way to answer this question. I would start by looking at the wild brew section here on HBT if your normal beers look anything like those you have a problem. the rest of the diagnosis will come by expierence as well as making sure you are sanitary when you brew. the best way to diagnose a problem is to create a environment that minimizes that risk from occurring in the first place. Oh yeah and stop worrying so much beer is much more resilient than you think.

I screwed up my last batch of beer. I opened the lid on my bucket too many times while it was fermenting and got a lacto infection. Decided to bottle anyways. I'm pretty sure I also overprimed it cause a left a bit of beer in the fermenting bucket because of the infection. I discovered a bottle bomb last week and moved the rest of the batch to my fridge.

I've been drinking it more than usual and it is a bit younger than I would like, but it is actually much better than the brew before it. I was pleasantly surprised!

ladodger34 said:

I screwed up my last batch of beer. I opened the lid on my bucket too many times while it was fermenting and got a lacto infection. Decided to bottle anyways. I'm pretty sure I also overprimed it cause a left a bit of beer in the fermenting bucket because of the infection. I discovered a bottle bomb last week and moved the rest of the batch to my fridge.

I've been drinking it more than usual and it is a bit younger than I would like, but it is actually much better than the brew before it. I was pleasantly surprised!

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Did it have an off taste though?

Im on 6 batches of beer and 1 cider. Of those, i've had two get infected (chloramines) and 2 ferment really high giving off undesirable esters. I was kinda just going with it and following the recipe instructions the best i could and picking up things here.

Then I read Palmers How To Brew and learned alot of little things I was doing wrong as well as what caused particular types of off flavors in my beer. I'm alot more confident in my next couple batches. I'd say read that if you haven't already as well as any other stuff u can get your hands on and hopefully that will give ya a good idea of what might be wrong with a batch and hopefully let ya prevent one from going down hill.

im going to read up

Pratzie said:

Im on 6 batches of beer and 1 cider. Of those, i've had two get infected (chloramines) and 2 ferment really high giving off undesirable esters. I was kinda just going with it and following the recipe instructions the best i could and picking up things here.

Then I read Palmers How To Brew and learned alot of little things I was doing wrong as well as what caused particular types of off flavors in my beer. I'm alot more confident in my next couple batches. I'd say read that if you haven't already as well as any other stuff u can get your hands on and hopefully that will give ya a good idea of what might be wrong with a batch and hopefully let ya prevent one from going down hill.

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Just a FYI about the "infection" from chloramines.... you cannot get a infection from chloramines.... Chloramine is a chemical added to tap water to treat it for potability for human consumption. Think chlorine ... chloramine is used in the same way to disinfect water from municipal water supplies. The way to treat chloramine is to use either sodium or potassium metabisulfate to break the chloramine bond.... usually about 1/2 a campden tablet per 10 gallons. agreed though that chloramine will cause off flavors and create chlorophenols.

MrNickVT said:

Did it have an off taste though?

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I don't think it tastes like it is supposed to so I would say it has off flavors.

ecarl said:

Thank you for all your responses. But if you'll allow me, I'd like to make a comment. For a number of reasons I mostly read online editions of newspapers. More interesting than most articles, however, are the comments to those articles posted by readers. The vast majority of the comments I read, whether in a local or national newspaper, are mean spirited and hateful. Rarely is there any insight one might expect in a well thought out comment. Maybe I'm naive but I am constantly amazed at the spiteful and ignorant comments I see. Notice that I never claimed the people making these banal comments are spiteful, ignorant, or mean spirited (they could be - I don't know) but their COMMENTS most certainly are.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is this site. I have posted a number of questions here, most of them ignorant. I try my best to experiment, read, ask questions of my local home brew shop, etc. before posting a question here. But sometimes I've got no where else to turn. Every time, every single time, I have received thoughtful, extremely helpful responses. I feel certain that in some cases posters were tempted to respond - "you are a moron, take up another hobby". But no one ever has. Even in jest. And I appreciate that. You all have renewed my faith in America. And I'm not being facetious.

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+1000

We were all noobs at one point...it amazes me to go back and read some of my first posts...

Agreed. We have ALL been there. Personally I will admit that I have my noobish tendencies and still screw stuff up and probably will for years to come. I think what helps most is that homebrewing is one of those hobbies that is not as widespread as some others, a touch obscure if you will, yet together on the web we have like minded people who you can discuss thinks you care about. I personally am appreciative for the assistance I have been given and this forum as a place to learn things and look things up. Not to mention like minded people to encourage me and mourn the passing of another keg. Think of it as paying it forward since what you learn here and what encouragement you get you will pass on when you know the answer. A good community. Most of the jerks dont have the patience to get into homebrewing. Welcome.

And to the OP. The earliest I would dump would be once I taste a beer. The only exception is if I had terrible sanitization practices and the beer decided to revolt and attack me. It is understandable not wanting to brew a beer that is not good, but the only way to learn from your mistakes is to try the finished product, analyze the off flavors, and learn what caused them so that you can refine your process and not repeat them. A spare fermenter bucket is not too much of an investment if you really want to brew again. Additionally there are small batches that you can make in other containers if you do not want to invest in another fermenter. Cheers! Don't give up and enjoy yourself.

Yes, my question was a bit general. But my second all grain batch was a double IPA and the first batch of any kind (extract or otherwise) that wasn't intended to be darkish in hue (Irish red, oatmeal stout, black IPA, etc.). After the boil, it looked as unappetizing as any liquid I had ever seen and smelled even worse. But I took your advice and kept it in the fermenter. That was a week ago. I racked to a secondary last night, the noisome odor was gone, it ceased to resemble viscous highliter yellow urine, FG was nearly there and it tasted pretty good (if I do say so myself). Niiice and hoppy. Thanks for your advice. It can only get better from here.