Shame in chucking?

IffyG said:

The only exception I've noticed is for beer with darker grains as a large portion of the grain bill or high gravity beer. Those usually need to sit in the keg for a week or two of cold conditioning before they taste great to me. I should also add the caveat that sours DO need the extra aging to develop.

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Good points. To me, the dark grain beer is a bit like chili--it can be good when really fresh, but letting those strong flavors meld a bit makes it awesome. :rockin:

As for the sours, you are so right. I'm really excited to get started on a solera project this summer!

AnOldUR said:

This and also how much beer can you use for cooking?

I've been kegging for over four years. I have a batch of bottles of an IPA from before that. Tasty beer, but for some reason it never carbed. Didn't really matter. I had other beer and moved on. We've been using it for cooking when needed all this time and there's still a few bottles left.

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Oh don't get me wrong, I dont use beer all the time in cooking. I actually want to use it more. The chili is one of the only things I make with beer. And I've used stouts before that I made that weren't great.

The chili turned out great! Remember, it's all based upon what you're cooking. With something like chili, the taste of the underlying liquid in the recipe is easily overpowered by the massive amounts of pepper, chili powder, salt, sugar, meat, veggies, bell peppers.....the whole shebang.

sid_marx said:

Thanks for all the replies and the wide range of viewpoints expressed

Chimay Blue, St Bernardus ABT 12, Westmalle Trippel and similar examples are my benchmarks and they're what I measure my own beers against. They are the beers I love to drink and when I have a beer I want be to drinking it because the experience is awesome. There is no room in my life for un-awesome beers!

Here's why I dumped my beers...

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Makes sense then. Your dive into brewing was in a lot deeper water than my own. I started with extract kits, only one that was bad was my first one and that was due to lack of water filtration and not realizing that 68 degree ambient temperature doesn't mean 68 degree fermentation. Then I stuck with kits for a few more, then moved to extract recipes and now to all grain. The most complex thing I've put together so far, was a porter AG recipe.

So yeah, I could see since you are learning on a higher curve than myself. I also probably don't have the high standards you have. Granted, there are beers I won't drink, others I drink because I want to be a good guest, but for the most part, most of my beer experiences, outside of BMC are a pretty awesome experience. Heck, even my beer that was flat out bad, I still drank enough of it to really track down what I did wrong. Maybe each sip wasn't that delightful, but I did have an awesome experience in the end, knowing what I did wrong and how to correct it.

IffyG said:

I agree with this viewpoint. If your beer (speaking of standard gravity beers) needs some age on it to be palatable, you have done something wrong. I'm drinking my my pale ales within 10-14 days of brewing 95% of the time.

The only exception I've noticed is for beer with darker grains as a large portion of the grain bill or high gravity beer. Those usually need to sit in the keg for a week or two of cold conditioning before they taste great to me. I should also add the caveat that sours DO need the extra aging to develop.

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This is actually what I've been trying to say for ages (get it?! ages? Never mind!).

A well made "regular" ale is really ready to package by about day 7 and aging it on the yeast may not harm it- but it does not necessarily help either. Some people prefer the character imparted by the yeast, but I'm not one of them. That's why I don't subscribe to the "month in primary" mantra. Once it's been finished for a couple of days and is clear, it's ready to package.

Bigger beers (higher ABV), and complex flavors do take a bit longer to meld and mellow.

But I think it would be a very rare case for something that tastes bad out of the fermenter to be a wonderful beer. It may improve a bit, depending on the flaws, but aging doesn't fix a really bad beer. Those are dumpers for me.

I give my bad beer to people I know that will drink anything and the rest pour out.

I just think it's exceedingly simple. It's your money, your ingredients, and your beer. If you don't like the taste, then dump it and brew a new one. I don't brew to choke down mediocre beer that I don't want to drink, just because it'll go to waste if I don't. That doesn't make any sense. Nor is waiting in the hopes that it may improve. I've heard of a few stories on here (note: a few) that told of a bad tasting beer that ended up spectacular by accident with age. Sure, some MAY improve, but most likely not by orders of magnitude. If I'm dumping a beer it's because it sucked, not because it's drinkable but not perfect.

Should make a meme: "Yea, I dump my beer. You mad?"

nickmv said:

Oh don't get me wrong, I dont use beer all the time in cooking. I actually want to use it more. The chili is one of the only things I make with beer. And I've used stouts before that I made that weren't great.

The chili turned out great! Remember, it's all based upon what you're cooking. With something like chili, the taste of the underlying liquid in the recipe is easily overpowered by the massive amounts of pepper, chili powder, salt, sugar, meat, veggies, bell peppers.....the whole shebang.

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one beer + one pack raw bratwurst + one can sauerkraut + 25 minutes on the stove = mmm

KeyWestBrewing said:

Ever heard the saying cook with wine you'd drink?

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Yes, and it's wrong. Wine is used to add acidity and to pull out alcohol-soluble flavors. Cooking with wine destroys any of the delicate subtleties present in a good wine. Those volatile compounds boil off quickly and leave you with the most basic flavors. Cooking with good wine is a waste of good wine.

Why would beer be any different?

Of course, it generally depends on the flaw. I wouldn't use infected beer, as acetic and lactic acid aren't going to boil off quickly. Ridiculously over-hopped beers would probably make a dish unpleasant too.

danielbt said:

Yes, and it's wrong. Wine is used to add acidity and to pull out alcohol-soluble flavors. Cooking with wine destroys any of the delicate subtleties present in a good wine. Those volatile compounds boil off quickly and leave you with the most basic flavors. Cooking with good wine is a waste of good wine.

Why would beer be any different?

Of course, it generally depends on the flaw. I wouldn't use infected beer, as acetic and lactic acid aren't going to boil off quickly. Ridiculously over-hopped beers would probably make a dish unpleasant too.

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I think you're muddling the quote. It's cook with wine you'd drink. I agree, there's not a big point in buying anything fancy as you will lose a lot of the subtle aspects of a nice wine. I can drink Charles Shaw and I wouldn't pay much more than that for a wine I'm basically buying as an ingredient.

With a bad beer it would be a question of what makes it bad. Cloyingly sweet? I can think of uses for that. Overly bitter? Might be a little harder to deal with that one.

Shooter said:

I think you're muddling the quote. It's cook with wine you'd drink. I agree, there's not a big point in buying anything fancy as you will lose a lot of the subtle aspects of a nice wine. I can drink Charles Shaw and I wouldn't pay much more than that for a wine I'm basically buying as an ingredient.

With a bad beer it would be a question of what makes it bad. Cloyingly sweet? I can think of uses for that. Overly bitter? Might be a little harder to deal with that one.

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You got what I was getting at. If its a workable taste as an ingredient by all means try to use it. But if something tastes bad why would you want that flavor in your food.

Only ever dumped two.
One was a "throw together everything I have a pound or two of and see what happens"......bad idea.
The second was a good beer, but the wife decided to help, and delabled two cases of bottles I had for the batch. Soaked em in oxy, got the labels off, rinsed em, dried them on the bottle tree, and had them ready to go.....problem is....she never rinsed the oxy from the inside of the bottles I didn't notice till a couple weeks later when I saw a white crust on top of all the beer in the bottles. I couldn't really get mad, but I did explain that oxy is not a no rinse sanitizer.

Darwin18 said:

There's no shame in dumping a batch. I'm considering doing so with an IPA that I brewed last year with Cascade, Horizon, and Glacier hops - just way too much citrus and ended up with little body to back it up. It will be my first dumper in a long time. Since I've moved to yeast starters and temperature control with a freezer, my quality has increased dramatically and I've eliminated many if not all of the off-flavors that my early beers had. This one was a poor recipe, not poor brewing. Just learn from where you made your mistake and apply that to the next beer.

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Wait!! I'll take it!!! LOL.

To be on-topic, I just dumped a batch for the first time. It was a Rogue Hazelnut Brown clone, to which I added 2 bottles of extract, when the kit only came with one. BAD idea. To be honest, I dont think I would have liked it with just the one. The extract tasted like an artificial one, and the smell/flavor wasn't that good.

I felt a little sorrow at seeing 2 cases worth of beer down the drain/on the ground, but not necessarily shame. That beer had been in bottles for a few months, and there was no way i was drinking it.

naga77777 said:

Wait!! I'll take it!!! LOL.

To be on-topic, I just dumped a batch for the first time. It was a Rogue Hazelnut Brown clone, to which I added 2 bottles of extract, when the kit only came with one. BAD idea.

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FWIW, the flavor extracts usually fade with time (sometimes dramatically). I had a chocolate raspberry stout that I used too much extract in and the flavor dropped off significantly after about 6 weeks.

^that's what I was hoping for, but sadly no luck.

seriously no beer smell/taste. Just extract. Blech.