Dumping Beer - Life is Too Short

[NorCalAngler]

I'm watching Top Gear and tossing a few batches that just never matured. A coffee porter, graff, and Newcastle clone. While some people have the "drinkable" threshold I have higher standards. BMC is drinkable, but I wouldn't waste my time drinking it so why would I hold my homebrew to drinkable criteria? I'm not even sad about it. My process and results are so much better now that these 6+ month old batches won't be missed. Make room for the new!

 

[KYB]

I'm with you. I have high standards for myself. Sometimes I even have pretty good beer, but gotta dump a gallon or more to make room for better beer. I'm not letting mediocre beer clog my pipeline. My first year I dumped a couple batches - one Imperial Stout that I have no idea what was wrong with, it was abnormally sweet. I thought I remembered it being great when bottling. Oh well. Also a Cream Ale and a Wheat beer that I used tap water for that both tasted real weird. Learned my lesson and moved on.

 

[count_dookie]

I'm completely the opposite, although I have enjoyed everything I have made so far. I hate dumping a beer, even half a beer.

one time a few months ago during a football game I had enjoyed more homebrew than I can remember and I was on my last beer about halfway through and SWMBO said it was time to go and reached for my beer, apparently I then grabbed the beer away and said "I have to finish my beer, I made it with my own two hands and if I dont finish it I am disrespecting myself"

 

[Spludge]

I just spontaneously burst into tears when I saw that pic

Agreed though, sometimes they just ain't up to snuff and beyond repair even by time.

 

[cheier]

Could be worse. I dumped half a keg of good beer because I needed room for my next batch.

 

[NorCalAngler]

Could be worse. I dumped half a keg of good beer because I needed room for my next batch.

Now THAT would make me cringe. Dumping bad beer is easy, but dumping good beer takes a special person.

 

[Snowhere]

I guess I am lucky. I started brewing in 1992 and in all those years, I have only tossed a single batch. It was a Fat Tire clone that never tasted right. It had a slight medicine taste so I assumed it was infected. Six gallons down the drain and it did not bother me. If one never makes a mistake, one never learns...................................

 

[KYB]

Now THAT would make me cringe. Dumping bad beer is easy, but dumping good beer takes a special person.

Nope. I am a perfectionist. I am constantly tweaking recipes. It's easy to make good beer, but difficult to make great beer. Sometimes you just gotta make room for the next batch to see how it is so you can rebrew it again tweaked.

 

[curlyfat]

You are all better men than I. I only dumped one batch, which was an experimental made from second runnings that tasted absolutely foul (sort of fecal...uck).

I guess the "waste-not, want-not" was beaten into me a little too much. I've sucked back a lot of mediocre beer of my own creation over the last decade.

Kudos? I guess?

 

[KYB]

Don't get me wrong, I hate wasting too, especially since I have so little money, but the perfection priority overrides that, mainly because I brew so much these days. When I wasn't brewing as much hell I'd choke anything down.

 

[bovineblitz]

I just dumped an entire batch for the first time. I think I know where the infection came from and it'll make me even more stringent about my sanitation so at least it wasn't a total loss.

 

[cheier]

Now THAT would make me cringe. Dumping bad beer is easy, but dumping good beer takes a special person.

As others have mentioned, it is about perfecting beers. I'm in this to brew more than I'm in it to drink. Besides, for the price of malts, I can brew a clone DFH 90 minute for the cost of a 6 pack of DFH 60 minute ($22 here in Alberta). I don't usually have reservations about tossing a beer to make room unless it is fantastic, in which case, I have a keg draining party...

 

[gr8shandini]

I have never poured out a beer, not even to put out a brush fire - Hank Hill

Wow, I can't imagine dumping perfectly drinkable beer considering the amount of time and effort that goes into creating it. Luckily I've only had one batch that I had to "choke down." I can understand not wanting to do that, but dumping "good" beer because it's not "great" beer seems excessive. Have you guys thought of doing smaller batches to refine your recipe and then brew for volume once you've nailed it?

 

[NorCalAngler]

Wow, I can't imagine dumping perfectly drinkable beer considering the amount of time and effort that goes into creating it.

To each their own. These beers were drinkable but not good by any stretch. I don't drink much, 1-2 a night. I dont like the idea that I would have to drink "drinkable" beer for the next 36-72 days straight to get rid of this stuff. I'm making great beer since these extract batches so why suffer through it? About $40-50 down the drain isn't much to pay for the lessons I learned along the way. That's less than some homebrewing classes around here.

 

[soundsandsuds]

I've dumped 2. One was my second batch, a barleywine which I bottled too soon and which turned into spouters and a batch of hopped beer syrup which I tried simply because I had never done it before. It was an experiment to see how good they could be with substituted yeast (pac-man) and some aroma hops. I went with the no-boil that the can suggested. The phenolic (band-aid) flavour was less than subtle. My guess is that the yeast was stressed due to a fair amount of the extract sitting in a clump on the bottom undisolved, so when the yeast was multiplying for the beer there wasn't enough.

 

[MeatyPortion]

I've dumped one. I waited for the infection to go away but it just kept coming back and the beer tasted, as well as smelled, very sour and off. It was definitely not going to clear up. I let it sit for 2 months and then dumped it.

 

[gr8shandini]

To each their own. These beers were drinkable but not good by any stretch. I don't drink much, 1-2 a night. I dont like the idea that I would have to drink "drinkable" beer for the next 36-72 days straight to get rid of this stuff. I'm making great beer since these extract batches so why suffer through it? About $40-50 down the drain isn't much to pay for the lessons I learned along the way. That's less than some homebrewing classes around here.

This I can understand. I guess I've been pretty lucky in that all of my beers so far have been pretty good, but I haven't tried anything too far out there, either. I was reacting more to O'Daniel's comments. It just seems that dumping a few gallons of each batch just to make room for a newer version is a good way to anger the beer gods.

 

[Valcarde]

I've dumped a batch. A raspberry wheat experiment that was badly oxidized due to making huge mistakes in how I added the raspberry. Didn't carbonate right and had a horrid aftertaste.

 

[remilard]

I dumped one full batch. I'll frequently not quite get through a keg of hefe or american lager or something that doesn't benefit from much age and dump the last gallon or so to get the keg back. For most beers I bottle off the last 1-4 gallons after I am done drinking it on tap. At that point it is easy to get rid of them (club meetings).

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

I'll frequently not quite get through a keg of hefe or american lager or something that doesn't benefit from much age and dump the last gallon or so to get the keg back. For most beers I bottle off the last 1-4 gallons after I am done drinking it on tap. At that point it is easy to get rid of them (club meetings).

^^Pretty much this for me (except I need the spot in the keezer, not the keg itself). People always ask why my beer is so clear and bottling the last gallon or so from a keg is why.

 

[samc]

When we have those keg vs bottling arguments, this is an additional plus for kegging. It is easier to dump a keg then it is to open all those bottles. I'm with OP 100% and have no issues with dumping a beer that I don't care for. Still have a Munich Helles that I don't like much and it's going to go one of these days. (I will never brew another Lager)

 

[KellyK]

I will point out there are things you can do to get rid of it that are not actually drinking it - vinegar and bbq sauce come to mind but I am sure there are other options. I recently had a porter that didn't come out quite right, boiled the 5 gallon keg down to about a gallon and added assorted goodies. Made some of the best damn bbq sauce you could ever ask for. For vinegar, you just need a malt mother, sun tea jar with spigot, and beer you don't want. 3-4 months and you have amazing malt vinegar, just be sure to let it do its thing AWAY from your primary fermentation area as acetobacter is not something you want in your beers.

 

[Mongrel]

I will point out there are things you can do to get rid of it that are not actually drinking it - vinegar and bbq sauce come to mind but I am sure there are other options. I recently had a porter that didn't come out quite right, boiled the 5 gallon keg down to about a gallon and added assorted goodies. Made some of the best damn bbq sauce you could ever ask for. For vinegar, you just need a malt mother, sun tea jar with spigot, and beer you don't want. 3-4 months and you have amazing malt vinegar, just be sure to let it do its thing AWAY from your primary fermentation area as acetobacter is not something you want in your beers.

Haven't made vinegar or bbq sauce yet, but hell yeah. Make beer bread, or brine a chicken. Cook with your beer, don't dump it unless it's bad.

 

[Tinga]

luckily im in college and i have friends desperate for alcohol so when i screw something up i just call up my friends and they take it away for me.

 

[NorCalAngler]

The BBQ sauce idea is great. I'll have to look into that for future mistakes. I have a Guinness clone that is good, but it turned out sweet at 1.021 and I wouldn't be too upset to turn a few bottles into BBQ sauce.

 

[impur]

I recently had to toss my first batch out. I had brewed it up and bottled but never got any carbonation. Then I bought a keg system, so i dumped the bottles into the keg and gave that a shot. It still didn't really carb up which is really odd i don't understand it, but it also just tasted bad.

 

[-TPM-]

Hey KellyK where did you get a malt mother from? I googled it and only fond 1 place and they're out of stock...

 

[beerjunky828]

I had to dump my 3rd batch ever made. I thought that 12 lbs of LME and about 8 oz of hops would be fantastic. It would have been had I not tried to stretch it to 10 gallons. I used chinook and some other high AA hop and it was just straight hop water. It had no malty flavor to it whatsoever. I got a few down only to dump about a case down the drain. Another time I tried to make a pumpkin beer and used about 12 lbs of extract (Liquid & dry) and did not take gravity readings. The beer was incredibly sweet and really, really high in alcohol. The burn didn't hurt me bad enough because I drank all of it within a month. These have taught me many things about brewing like to make just 5 gallon batches and how much extract you need for a moderately alcoholic brew, the importance of gravity readings, how much hops you will need to use for balance.

Having said that, dumping a beer is only done in extreme circumstances.

And I am damn glad that I made those mistakes because making beer has gotten extremely easy since then. And I have about 20 AG notches in my belt.

 

[agroff383]

If I find stuff that has been around for awhile I will try it and if it is bad I will dump it, most of it was from my first year of homebrewing so I made a lot of mistakes. Now if I make something I'm not crazy about it will sit in the keg for a while or if its bottled it goes to my buddies house, 3 of them live together haha, they drink anything that comes from my brewery.

 

[agroff383]

I will point out there are things you can do to get rid of it that are not actually drinking it - vinegar and bbq sauce come to mind but I am sure there are other options. I recently had a porter that didn't come out quite right, boiled the 5 gallon keg down to about a gallon and added assorted goodies. Made some of the best damn bbq sauce you could ever ask for. For vinegar, you just need a malt mother, sun tea jar with spigot, and beer you don't want. 3-4 months and you have amazing malt vinegar, just be sure to let it do its thing AWAY from your primary fermentation area as acetobacter is not something you want in your beers.

Good things to know for the future, a step by step on the BBQ sauce would be killer to try.

 

[-TPM-]

I found this for the BBQ sauce: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/2017/Beer-Lovers-BBQ-Sauce117972.shtml

 

[drkwoods]

I take all bad batches (rare) and distill them (in New Zealand of course) Makes fantastic small batch Whiskey.

 

[nutty_gnome]

Wow... dummping beer. I made myself drink 8 gallons of the 'sterling gold' recipe even after it fermented in the high 70s with US05. Tasted like bandaids and shyt, but what are you gonna do? Gotta learn from your mistakes.... and I won't neglect fermentation temps again. Right now I'm drinking somehting that has too much roasted barely and that has negatively impacted the taste.... but how else am I gonna learn if I don't personally drain the bottles?!?

 

[Ravenshead]

I dumped about a half batch last week. It was passably drinkable but not as good as it's brothers. That keg stayed full in my fridge for 5 mos as batch after batch were consumed.

Last week I had to take it out of it's misery. It was like watching Old Yeller.

 

[NorCalAngler]

but how else am I gonna learn if I don't personally drain the bottles?!?

Interesting. You're punishing yourself in order to imprint the lesson in your brain? I guess I'm lucky I don't have to subject myself to bad beer in order to remember that improper wort aeration or low pitching rates will cause off flavors and stalled fermentation.

If I tried to make brownies and accidentally left them in too long and they burned I wouldn't force myself to eat the entire pan just to teach myself a lesson. Even if they were $30 brownies they would go in the trash. For me the money wasted is a far bigger reason to learn my lessons than drinking bad beer.

 

[Clef051]

I have had a few that I choked down the only one that I dumped was my first that never started fermenting.

 

[nutty_gnome]

mmmmmm.... brownies.....

 

[Ravenshead]

If they were $30 brownies, I'd probably still eat them since I wasn't necessarily making them for taste alone.:fro:

 

[Bobby_M]

I have dumped a crap ton of beer. It's like snow skiing. If you never fall, you're not trying hard enough.

 

[edasaurus]

I don't really make enough beer to dump yet, but I can see the issue bad beer clogging up the pipeline if one were to make beer a bit more regularly.

I take all bad batches (rare) and distill them (in New Zealand of course) Makes fantastic small batch Whiskey.

Hmmm...interesting. Tell me more. Do you have pictures of this distillery...in New Zealand? I'd like to know more about this. Just for informational purposes...