How many batches have you ruined and how??

Im interested in the many times you have destroyed a brew, and how.

So far my experiences are, One infection, and one beer that just wasn't right and idk why.

I hope that this thread will attract young and old to share the many disasters brewers face and how to avoid them. Or maybe just a few fun stories.

Not too many. When I started brewing it was my friend and I and he insisted on something like 2.5 lbs of roasted malt in a RIS, man it was like an ashtray. I also did a 10 gallon batch last year, in one of the carboys the seal broke and it was the worst acetaldehyde I've ever tasted, the other 5 gallons was fine.

only one infected beer, still not sure how - not even a good infection which i often try to do on purpose. just a belgian pale ale that got some nasty fuzzy acetone carpet on top... i've tossed in cherries and brett and will let it sit for a year and see if i can save a bad beer.

beyond that, ruined two others, but they were my first two attempts at a partigyle and were low alcohol (2% and 2.5%) and they're undrinkable and never got bottled. my 3rd partigyle came out at 4.5% and i "ruined" it by overhopping it not realizing how little body is in a partigyle. but it's fine for me being a hop head, i just wouldn't serve it to anyone.

3-5 gallon batches so far. Switched to all grain and first batch used all tap water. Tasted like hopped pool water.
Another batch got a pedio infection and had to dump. Oxy soak and bleach soak of bucket to kill infection resulted in another 5 gal of pedio. Beer and bucket went right into the trash.
15 gallons wasted is a sin

i put a tsp of wormwood in a fermenter full of Scottish ale talk about nasty I use its slug poison in the garden now

drank 8 Red Hook Long Hammers then steeped grains at about 190 for 15 minutes...forgot the hop schedule, pitched too high and fermented hot. Learned my lesson...

My very 1st beer was undrinkable. I think it was due to fermenting high, bottling poorly (no carbonation) and probably old ingredients (LME in a can). BTW it was a Bock and was recommended by the LHBS employee as a 1st beer. It was fermented at Ale temps.

Two separate batches of blonde ale. Pretty sure they just fermented at too high a temp. Stupid Texas summers.

Had my first two go bad this summer: a hefe that didn't get boiled long enough with a heavy pilsner grain bill and then had to cool overnight. That one ended up tasting like cooked veggies with a nice sulfurous aroma to boot. Second was this batch of Ed Wort's Oktoberfest that my buddy put in his keezer for me (since I've got no temp regulation aside from the swamp cooler). When I pulled it out of there three weeks later, it had mold growing on the outside of the fermenter. Beer was sour, and two weeks after bottling every bottle has crud floating on top of the beer. They also basically explode when you open one--everything in the bottle jets out in a geyser in about half a second. So there's somewhere between $70-80 down the drain. Le sigh!

First brew with no help or real instructions (my pre-HBT.com days), kept specialty grains in sack for full boil. Actually turned out okay (so not technically ruined).

Made an ESB that just doesn't taste right. No clue what I did wrong but letting it celler to see if it gets better.

I just pitched a Berliner Weisse because instead of the Lato taking hold like planned i ended up with fuzzy green mold.

Just one...

A batch of skeeter pee had a floating thermometer in it. The tip broke and all the "steel" shot and glass fell into the fermenter. I wouldn't have minded... (glass sinks, steel is inert), but there was a terrible metallic taste after 6+ mo in the carboy, so I ended up dumping it.

The steel shot was magnetic, so the iron content must have been very high.

Edit: I no longer put any glass directly into the wort or must (except for pyrex, very rarely).

Just one. Many years ago, before kegging a beer, I intended to add Polyclar to it to clear, unfortunately, I grabbed the wrong container and added some kind of cleaner/sanitizer to it. Had to dump the batch.

When I first got started I tried to go right into stouts my 2nd or 3rd batch, and I didn't really get that less is more with stout grain bills. Way too much roasted barley, chocolate, and black patent. So harsh in the bottles it got left behind the bar for a year and a half, at which point it was actually half decent.

Pitched a single vial of English ale yeast (no starter) into a 90ish degree porter and then let it ferment at in high 70s ambient temps. It smelled exactly like Tri-Flo bike lubricant and was totally undrinkable, even a year later.

On my first PM, I didn't know that you had to wait to let the mash temp equalize and I threw a bunch of ice in because I thought the temp was too high. End result was a cool mash and a very thin kinda nasty beer.

Just a couple batches from separate yeast harvesting issues. For some reason the yeast wasn't strong enough and bad things took hold before the yeast.

Not entirely ruined by normal person standards, but I like to consider them failures.

1) First batch: APA recipe out of How To Brew. Anemic boil, pitched low viability vial of wlp001 straight in at 80*F, fermented at ~77*F. Tasted like Belgian-y plastic water.

2) Second batch: IPA recipe of my own creation. Was going to rack onto yeast cake, mistook 160*F for 60*F and poured wort straight on, killing probably the entire cake. Had another low viability vial of wlp001, pitched that straight in. Also, only about 1 oz of hops in the last 15 minutes. Not terrible, but didn't taste anything like an IPA.

3) Fourth batch: NB Ranger clone from BYO. 2 pounds of cane sugar in a 1.064 beer. Still has a cidery taste 3 months later and is under-attenuated from what I'm presuming to many simple sugars initially in the wort, or just low yeast viability.

Depends. Had a couple batches go sour, but I don't mind that. One ropey infection and one gusher. All of them were probably due to a sanitation error.

My friends and I decided to secondary in 6.5 gallon buckets for our 15 gallon blonde ale....what a mistake. The mold was gross, the taste was horrible. We bottled some anyway just to see if they would turn out ok. They did not, year later we dumped all of it.

I had to pour out a Pliny clone. Not sure exactly what went wrong, but I think it was one of the following or a combination of one or more of the following:

Pitched bad yeast
Not enough yeast
didn't cold crash
too much of a hurry
too much hops
too much trub transferred
poor water treatments.

Two.

1. An infection, probably due to an unboiled water addition (new store bought gallon jugs).

2. Over back-sweetened a chocolate milk stout.

Duvel clone, bit too much sugar, fermented a bit warm, ended up with rocket fuel.

Didn't dump. Friend drank it all. I think he liked it

I have thrown out 4. To this day, I am still not certain what happened. But I think it had to do with how I was washing yeast. I think I was not doing a good decant of the junk at the bottom, and was getting perhaps some proteins or something capable of spoiling in my yeast harvests.

My only evidence is I tasted some month old bottles of yeast, and they had the same horrid after taste that the bad beers had. I have since switched to top cropping, and have not had a hint of a problem.

Had one of those bad Nottingham batches before the recall.

Wanted to make a light pseudo lager but couldn't get it below 1.008, friends advice to use Beano turned it into 1.000 that then turned into gushers. Beer picked up a clove taste that made it taste like a watery Belgian blonde was ok, until it started to get even more clove flavor. Mother in law loved that beer though.

Ruined half of my batch a Munich Helles with some bad O2 absorbing caps. I had about 20 left and wanted to use them up so I bottled half of the batch in them and the other half in the regular gold caps. Every bottle that got the O2 cap took forever to carb, then they all turned into gushers. (Not improper mixing of priming sugar, I had sanitized the caps then randomly pulled them to cover the bottles. Only O2 capped beers turned bad).

My first beer, a wheat beer made from extract, turned out pretty sour. I was completely new, still wet behind the ears. I'm not sure what happened, but I just let me beer sit on the yeast. Bad idea. When I bottled it, the yeast was transfered into the bottles giving it a very cloudy look and creating bottle bombs. Whenever you opened one, a gyser of foam and beer would erupt. Not so fun.

Also, the beer had a very strong yeast flavor.

I guess the moral is to always rack to a secondary so the beer isn't sitting on it's lees.

When I first started adding brewing salts for adjusting the water profiles for the mash I thought you were supposed to add to the strike water. I added a BUNCH of Baking Soda to raise the RA for a Black IPA then tested the pH...added 5.2...then more...then more...then more...gave up trying to get it to 5.2 and pumped the water onto the grains and proceeded with the recipe. It tasted like I used ocean water to brew the beer...saltiest taste ever. I did have a friend who liked it...but she's a crazy salt freak.

I have had some off flavors. In fact last spring I was becoming frustrated. I may have finally figured it out. I do brew in the dead of Wisconsin winters. And, to pump hot water from my HLT to the Mash tun I have had to get it very hot so it arrives close to the beginning mash temp I want. No science here BTW just a gut feeling that 198F would work. It pretty much did.

But then, I "trained" myself to send very hot sparge water to the mash tun. In the spring, when temps are now much higher I did not adjust my procedure.

I want that grain bed at 168F and no higher.

Only two. Not bad considering I've been brewing since the '80s....
One I made root beer for my kids in my fermenter and brewed the next day.... root beer flavors in a Bitter are just about nasty! (gaak!)
Even worse was "The Great Lager Disaster" of 1989... I have a closet under my stairwell that stays in the mid to upper '30s during the winter.... "sounds like a perfect Lagering cave" I thought. So, I brewed up a Pilsner..... I forgot all about it due to deaths in the family, crazy work schedule, etc.... around July the SWMBO opened up the closet to look for something.... and let loose a blood curdling scream.... the airlock of course had dried out, and nasty looking fungus had come out of the top of the carboy, down the sides, and all over the floor.... looked like The attack of the mushroom people.... to this day I dare not use the word "Lager" around her....

I recently dumped about a quarter of my fat tire clone. It was just too sweet for the style and something else was off. I drank a lot of it but it just got to the point where I had to dump the rest. I also did the drunk brew day with a dunkelweiss about a week ago and added 2 pounds of honey to my boil. It seems ok but I know it isn't going to turn out like a real dunkel.

Well, I wouldn't say ruined, but I did mess up two batches, one of which was barely drinkable for about 6 months! My first AG, I didn't quite understand batch sparing I guess, and didn't have enough wort for my boil, but went ahead and figured I cuold just add water at the end. My SNPA clone ended up tasting like Bud Light. Not ruined, but not what I wanted. Then, on another brew I accidentally used about a pound extra of melanoidin malt in a brew, which was WAY too much. About 6 months later, I was able to drink it, but didn't enjoy it. A couple of my friends really liked it though. Most of it went down the drain.

I have dumped 2: Stout with a major infection, Honey Wheat that tasted like buttered popcorn. Some infections here and there a few years ago. Recently was Chloramine in every batch till I figured where it was coming from. Had to treat all my water on brewday.

I've made several beers that I thought were ruined. Then I tried them several weeks to a month later and found them to be much improved.

In 40 some batches I've only had one that I feel I ruined. It was my second batch of all grain. I took a gravity reading prior to the boil. In my haste I forgot to adjust for temp and volume and thought my efficiency was horrible. So I added extract to the boil. The OG ended up being way high.

The ABV ended up being over 8%. OK for an IPA maybe. But this was a California Common. It wasn't completely ruined. It was just terrible compared to an earlier extract version of a Common, which had been excellent. It took me 7 months to drink all of the ruined Common. Then only because I ran out of other beers to drink.

So far none......until possibly last night

I made a nice partial mash pale ale with more earthy, piney hop profiles (Simcoe & Fuggles). I have been wanting to experiment with adding cedar spirals to a brew, so now was my chance to make an earthy, danky pale ale to compliment the cedar. I just couldn't decide if I wanted to steep the cedar spirals or soak in rum and add to a secondary. I went to my basement, grabbed a red cedar log that I already had stripped the bark off of for another project, and used my draw knife to obtain 2 oz. of cedar spirals. I made sure to knife the sap wood and heartwood for equal representation.

I decided to steep them and my plan was to put the cedar spirals in a steeping bag, throw it in a gallon of water and steep from cold to 170 degrees, hold for 30 min., remove the bag of spirals, and add to the BK for the boil. I started the cedar steep on my stovetop inside. While preparing the equipment, the mash, etc., I lost track of time and my wife indicated that my cedar steep had just started boiling, so she turned it off immediately, so it only boiled for less than a minut. The cedar tea was an amazing color....a deep amber color (think Tahquamenon River) and since it had boiled I figured what the hell, it's sterile...just add it to the fermenter to top off to five gallons when I was done. I left the cedar spirals in the water for the next 1 1/2 hours while finishing up the mash sparging and the boil, until it fell back to room temp.

So I finished the boil, used my IC to cool it down to pitching temp., topped off with the cedar tea (minus the bag of cedar spirals) and water up to 5 gallons, aerated the hell out of it and took a sample for my OG. My OG was spot on and the wort had a noticeable, yet subtle smell of cedar. I sampled the wort and holy sh*t.......BITTER! Not so much bitterness from the Simcoe, but just a resin bitterness that was strange and dominated the hops. I may throw an ounce of Simcoe and an ounce of Fuggles into a secondary and rack onto that to cover it up to some degree, but I haven't a clue what it's going to turn out like. It's chugging away right now fermenting and the aeroma is of hops and subtle cedar. I assume the bitterness is from tannins released from the cedar.....I hope to hell it tames down with age!

Advice or suggestions????

Figured I'd chime in since I officially just lost my first 5 gal batch.

Did an "Old Speckled Hen" clone. It was in the secondary already, clearing to a nice reddish brown as it should be. I wasn't able to check on it for a few days and my daughter shut the door to my pantry allowing it to get too hot. I think the Irish Ale yeast mutated and it started fermenting more. I bottled anyways and it tastes like water and alcohol. The yeast chewed up almost all the sugar.

Another batch way back was a Belgian something or other, supposed to be around 8.5% and ended up being 10% instead. Wasn't really bad but what a sweet alcoholic kick! My buddy passed out after half of the party keg.

Ive had a batch that was infected by something terrible. Still dont know what. I tried harvesting yeast from the dregs of a couple of bottles of Rochfort 10 and stepping up with a starter. Started out looking great in the primary but after a week i got a wet cat food aroma (open up a can of friskes and you'll know). I let it ferment for a while but it never really stopped. I went to transfer it, still smelled like cat food, made the mistake of tasting it, rotten cat food. I almost puked. A recent blonde ale that i used US-05 with turned out tasting belgian.

Man I didn't ruin my hefe last night but I came damn close. My dumb ass thought that I could step away from the siphon going from kettle-->fermenter for two minutes to feed the cat, and when I came back there was about a gallon of my six hours' hard work on the floor. Cleaned it up swiftly so no mass stickiness, but only ended up with about 4.25g in the fermenter. Oh well.

One batch, and surprisingly I was able to save half of it. 10 gallon Summer Ale I brewed this past May. All pilsner malt as base. Propane ran out at around 35 minutes into the boil, I didnt want to go get more. On top of that I didnt want to chill it because I was TO'ed and a bit drunk. So it went into the fermenters hot and chilled overnight. The next day I could smell the cooked veggies as soon as I went into the garage. Pitched anyway.

3 weeks later I decide I want to bottle half of this and keg the other. No sense in either taking up 2 kegs or bottling the entire batch if it turns out crappy. A couple weeks later, same taste and aroma in both keg and bottle. So I dryhopped the kegged batch hoping to cover up the smell/taste and it actually turned out drinkable (actually my mothers favorite batch to date).

Bottles have been relinquished to cooking beer. And even then you can taste the veggies in most foods if I used too much beer. I've gone through about half of them so far between cooking and hopeful testing. Havent needed the bottles so I dont plan on dumping the rest.

Now that I think about it I may try to add some hops to a couple bottles and see what happens. What does everyone think - pellets or whole leaf?

kpr121 said:

... ... Now that I think about it I may try to add some hops to a couple bottles and see what happens. What does everyone think - pellets or whole leaf?

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I honestly couldn't figure out what the heck you were talking about.

dump #1: my first lager, a pilsner, i used a half-a@@ rinsed gallon milk jug for the blowoff container. As the wort was cooling in the fridge it sucked up some milky water into the blowoff tube and subsequently into the carboy...fermention smelled like sour milk. bottled it anyway, 6 months later it still tasted like sour milk.

dump #2: was trying to make a clone of new belgiums skinny dip. Kafir lime leaves are used. I looked online for the best way to use them and put together what I thought would add a subtle lime leaf flavor. I shreaded up 6 leaves (an ounce was like 60 leaves) and threw them in during secondary. It ended up tasting like citrus windex. Let it sit in the keg for a few months, never got any better.

I've only dumped 2 batches to date thankfully

#1 Way too much crystal. I added 3lbs of crystal to an attempt at an Irish red. Came out too cloying and tasted like drinking a toffee bar. A few people claimed to like it, but I think they were just being nice

#2 Had a digital thermometer go wonky and read about 20 degrees low. Missed my mash temp by a pretty large margin w/out realizing it on an IPA. Turned into bitter hop water.

passedpawn said:

I honestly couldn't figure out what the heck you were talking about.

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Sorry. I have DMS in bottled beers. Should I try to mask few test bottles by dryhopping with pellets or whole leaf hops?

More clear?