Second Batch Terrible!!!

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Nickhouse80

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My first batch was a Brewers Best American Light Ale and turned out great. I kinda "winged" my second batch which might have been a mistake. I just cracked it open and it tasted very sour and just... nasty. The biggest difference was I used liquid yeast for the 2nd batch. Has anyone ever just dumped a bad batch?
 
Sourness tends to be associated with an infection, but it may just be young and not really be sour, just green. How long has it been since you brewed this one up?
 
Agree with what others said above. At the very least be sure that everything is as sanitized as possible for the third batch. Also, don't get discouraged!!! **** happens...

:tank:
 
Once I gained confidence with recipes I started experimenting. The first batch I experimented on (a German hefeweitzen) should have been thrown out. I was in college, so.... it was consumed. To this day I STILL can't drink a real German Hefeweitzen. I even lived in Germany last year and I STILL can't face the taste or even the smell of one.

I learned that brewing is more like baking than stir-frying. Follow recipes exactly and you'll know when you're ready to mess with them. Improv is not rewarded.

Keep brewing!

BrewOnBoard
 
Try looking closely at your bottles, room temp, near a bright light. Can you see anything floating on top, clinging to the edge of the bottle? Perhaps a fine clearish/opaque film?
 
Dont feel bad. My first batch was a partial mash. Scorched the extract, and missed my final gravity. It tasted like half water, half heff after carbing!

2nd time was revenge on the first, or so I thought. Only this time I went all grain. I wound up missing my mash temp, oversparging after mysteriously getting too much liquid from first runnings and not correcting sparge amounts , plus missing final gravity. Once again half water/half wheat beer.

On the bright side of all this, I will not be making the same mistakes again and have corrected problems in what I did. My third batch is coming up, and everybody around my place thinks I suck at brewing LOL.

The most important thing is to not give up, and learn why things went wrong and correct for next time. I feel just exhausted at the end of the brew day, and i feel like throwing in the towel. I think part of it is stress making it harder, because there is a lot to remember and you dont wanna eff it up.

Dont throw out your beer, let it age and taste again. From what I understand unless it is heff, you want it to age to mellow things most of the time.
 
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