I needed to hear this. I am sitting on a batch of puke-inducing porter. I have all these voices in my head saying "give it time, give it time..." but its HORRIBLE. Awful. The worst. Its not a little bad. Its all the way bad. No saving it.
Its going down the drain tomorrow.
Let me talk about bad beers like past relationships:
Failed beer - "hoppy wheat." Crappy, harsh when I tasted it in the fermeter. Dry hopped it which made it crappier, grassier, and harsher. Bottled it. Crappy for first month. Progressively crappier over next 4 months. DUMP IT.
Failed beer - Berliner weisse. Odd tasting. Not really sour. Got more and more odd tasting over next month. "Give it time" voice speaks to me. Comments in forums say, "it takes time." Month two, funky. Month three, flavors of burnt couches, oil wells burning, dryer vent smoldering, rubber hoses melting. DUMP IT NOW.
Failed beer - English IPA. Forgot to put in the C90. Nothing to balance the hops. Brutally bitter. Used S-04 too warm. Tasted like someone puked a fruit salad into a jelly jar and topped it with aspirin. Eventually fruity esterbombs subsided into nothing but godawful bitterness. DUMP IT.
Hefeweizen try number 300 - Tried to "be creative" with recipe that is simple, needs no creativity, and tolerates no creativity. Tried to learn from previous 299 failed mistakes. Ah, this one is nice I say. Smells like banana cream pie. Tastes like heaven. That's week one in the bottle. Week two, meh, kind of a sulfury thing. It'll pass. Week three, smells someone pumped one of those big vacuum sewer trucks into my nose. It'll pass, I say. "don't rush the beer" voice in my head. Week four. Undrinkable. So much sulfur it's probably a Strike Anywhere Beer.
In every single case I mentioned, it was apparent from very early on that this batch was going pear shaped. Yet I continued to persist in the vain hope that my sense wasn't correct. Had I just dumped it and moved on, I wouldn't have wasted the time, the bottles, the dry hop, the whatever. DUMP IT.
Here's another story:
Making a tripel. Harvest a yeast from a bottle of Avery Nineteen. It's like WLP550 I think. Starter tastes and smells like heaven. Brewday is perfect. A little short on volume from trub loss and bad planning, but OG is only +.002 of target. Fermentation goes well. Smells incredible. Find myself huffing the carboy fumes. Takes a while to clear, but eventually does with a bit of gelatin. FG is right where I want it. On bottling day, it tastes like pure sexual chocolate in the bucket. I tried one last night after three weeks in the bottling: om nom nom says me. 9.2%, decently hoppy, smooth as silk, smells like perfume and fresh outdoor air with belgian angels floating in it, and a pleasing boozy warmth that feels like a purring cat on my lap.
If the process is sound, the beer will be sound. You know if its going to work from day one. Good beer isn't an accident. It's not a surprise.