Hard To Make Bad Homebrew

[AZCoolerBrewer]

It seems to me after brewing a year and a half that if you use reasonable methods, i.e. good sanitation, proper fermentation temps and recipes that work and are pretty much in style for the beer you want to make that it is really quite easy to make good beer and conversely hard to make bad beer. My personal experience is that as I have listened to the collective advice of this site and solved my own problems, I have had 3 "serious" problems over 11 batches none of which caused my beer to be undrinkable or even that unpleasant depending on how you take it. My personal experience is that RDWAHAHB is solid advice.

 

[RM-MN]

Following a tested recipe works out really well. Small changes to it can individualize it to your taste. Radical changes can make some pretty bad stuff if you don't know what you are doing.

 

[JB_Brewing2]

It seems to me after brewing a year and a half that if you use reasonable methods, i.e. good sanitation, proper fermentation temps and recipes that work and are pretty much in style for the beer you want to make that it is really quite easy to make good beer and conversely hard to make bad beer. My personal experience is that as I have listened to the collective advice of this site and solved my own problems, I have had 3 "serious" problems over 11 batches none of which caused my beer to be undrinkable or even that unpleasant depending on how you take it. My personal experience is that RDWAHAHB is solid advice.

I agree! While I have good sanitation habits, I don't always check OG or FG, modify my municipal water, or completely avoid oxidation during transfer from fermenter to keg. Yet, after approximately 100 brews, I have never had a "dumper". Are some better than others? Yes, but undrinkable? Nope.

 

[McKnuckle]

I don't know. Personally I think there are a lot of presumptive "ifs" involved in your premise. It may be uncommon to make undrinkable beer, but it's easy to make mediocre beer. Despite reading and learning and practicing like crazy, I made plenty of that in my first year - even two years - of brewing. I still make an occasional batch! Now, it's more about the recipe being off target somehow rather than a serious technical error.

Anyway, whether it's easy or not, brewing is ultimately worth the time and energy investments that it demands.

 

[20grit]

It's really easy to convince yourself everything you've made is ok. I've had beers that I wanted to like; in the end, I dumped them. I learned from what I thought went wrong.
All my issues have been water related.

Be sure that you're not just liking your beers because they're yours. No one wants to admit they underperformed.

 

[Homercidal]

After many years I still have issues. They are a lot less common than they used to be, but I don't think my beer is perfect, even for my tastes. There are too many variable to list everything everyone needs to do right to make "great" beer, but there are a few major areas that need attention. Once you have those under control, then with the right recipe you shouldn't have beer that's bad to drink.

This past summer, though, I brewed a Belgian Pale Ale for a homebrew league. It wasn't a bad beer at the time, but not one of my favorite styles. After bottling for the competition that month I put the keg in my room to site until I had room again in the kegerator. Put it back in about 2 weeks ago and chilled it down and got the carb level where I wanted. And then dumped it a few days later. Too much band aid. I remember a bit of rubber flavor back when I first tasted it, but it was pretty mild. Now it's undrinkable. (To me.) So maybe if it had been drinked up right away it would have been "ok".

 

[Radboud]

Water is key. It's pretty hard to make a decent beer with water that sucks.

 

[Yooper]

Oh, I think it's pretty easy to make bad beer!

Maybe it's just me as a BJCP judge, but I've had lots of people send me bad beer, asking me what I think and what could be wrong with it.

Some people are quite surprised when they think they have a winner and get a score of 21 (out of 50) because their beer just isn't very drinkable to others. I call it UBS- Ugly Baby Syndrome- because just like doting parents that have a ugly baby, these brewers think their beer is great. Really, beauty is in the eye of the beerholder after all..................

I think you're right, though. Assuming perfect sanitation, temperature control, and good water, making a drinkable beer is not terribly difficult. And it's not all that much harder to make a pretty good beer. Getting to the point of consistently excellent is a tougher goal.

 

[passedpawn]

I've had some astounding success with failure. Gushers, bottle bombs, nasty web of whatever growing over the surface of the fermentor. I'm pretty sure what caused most of them, and I don't do that anymore, so things have been much better over the last few years.

BTW, don't toss a dirty beet into chilled wort, even if you've sliced it thin

 

[Mer-man]

I'd counter that it is easy to make beer.

 

[z-bob]

I've had some astounding success with failure. Gushers, bottle bombs, nasty web of whatever growing over the surface of the fermentor. I'm pretty sure what caused most of them, and I don't do that anymore, so things have been much better over the last few years.

BTW, don't toss a dirty beet into chilled wort, even if you've sliced it thin

You can't leave us hanging like that, what's the story?

 

[NSMikeD]

nothing like drinking a great beer alongside one of your homebrews for a reality check.

I do agree, it's pretty easy to make a good beer if you follow recipes and take reasonable proven steps. Experimenting and pushing the envelope, like brewing a NEIPA or a sour, ups the risk-reward function.


Everyone has their own risk/reward balance. RDWAHAHB works for many homebrewers, but for some, it isn't enough.

 

[Murphys_Law]

I always tell people that it's easy to make beer but requires effort to make (really) good beer. I've made several batches that I just didn't like so I dumped them. I'm not going to drink something I don't like just because I made it myself. And dumping a beer I don't like gives me room to make something I will (hopefully!) like!

 

[JayInAmes]

Heh, I've been a pretty hard critic of my beers, and now I've got it to where I think they are pretty good. Like Yooper said, just my opinion, though. Got to take the next step to having others judge the results. It's not personal, and it will help to make me better at brewing.

Maybe it is perfect, who knows? (yeah, right!) But I'll never know until having it judged professionally. All your friends saying it's great isn't the same thing. They just don't want to make you mad, so they'll get more homebrews!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Sometimes the beer is good but one's process needs adjusting. One of my own examples is having a couple bottles from a good tasting batch become dark and not very tasty... From oxidation. I have changed my process not so much to prevent all situations that I believe are the cause, but to isolate the bottle it happened (air bubbles from stopping/starting flow into bottles) those become my "test samples" that I drink first. Yano, to check carbonation week one and two.

 

[passedpawn]

You can't leave us hanging like that, what's the story?

Alex, let's take Ways to Make an Irish Red Ale Red for $200. Beet was meant to go into the boil, but wife took her sweet time getting back from grocery and by the time beet was in hand, beer was done and chilled, but I tossed it in anyway. Woopsy. That beer was brewed just for the huge yeast cake that I needed for a barleywine. So, that beet took down both beers with seriously nasty off-flavors. Lesson learned!

 

[jekeane]

As @yooper said. Making drinkable decent beer with sound basics is not terribly difficult. Once you start looking at beers in terms of Style guidelines and judging it's different. I can't count the times that I have sat down to judge a flight and beer after beer I've asked myself "what was this person thinking entering this?" At that point I tell myself "they must just want helpful feedback to try and fix it".

I think judging has been one of the biggest benefits for my brewing.

 

[Dan_K]

It's not that hard to make bad beer if you do all-grain and screw up some things. For example, mashing too high, oversparging, undersparging, etc.
Taking too many gravity readings. Or getting your beer infected (on accidental). Being lazy and not cleaning your bottles well enough.

Someone sent me some homebrew and 1/2 the bottles were bad.

 

[mongoose33]

Oh, I think it's pretty easy to make bad beer!

Maybe it's just me as a BJCP judge, but I've had lots of people send me bad beer, asking me what I think and what could be wrong with it.

Some people are quite surprised when they think they have a winner and get a score of 21 (out of 50) because their beer just isn't very drinkable to others. I call it UBS- Ugly Baby Syndrome- because just like doting parents that have a ugly baby, these brewers think their beer is great. Really, beauty is in the eye of the beerholder after all..................

I think you're right, though. Assuming perfect sanitation, temperature control, and good water, making a drinkable beer is not terribly difficult. And it's not all that much harder to make a pretty good beer. Getting to the point of consistently excellent is a tougher goal.

I recall you writing something similar a few months ago and it caused a certain amount of introspection on my part. How much is wanting to believe my beer is good, and how much is that it really is good?

I've brewed Biermuncher's Black Pearl Porter a couple of times. Added a bit of vanilla. I've had some really great feedback on it--except that two people who are critical tasters (meaning they'll be honest) both found it to be thin, i.e., not much body. So which is it? I am not a huge porter lover but this I like. Because it's my baby, or because it fits my palate?

Now, I brewed that beer according to recipe, only change being 60L crystal instead of 30L, which shouldn't have changed much. Despite my friends feeling it lacked body, I didn't see anything in the Black Pearl thread that suggested this. So which is it? Does it lack body? Or is it a terrific recipe that those two people just didn't like?

That said, I had very good reviews at my homebrew club. So...which is it?

************

Yooper, I've drawn a friend into homebrewing. His--our--first recipe was your Dogfish Head clone. Despite screwing up a couple things, mostly timing of hop additions, we produced a really nice beer out of that. Others were coming back for more, he really liked it. I'm not a big IPA fan but I liked it too. IPAs are growing on me. I'd venture to say that your recipe produces a really good beer, provided the process allows that to come out.

And I don't think that's just because it's my baby.

************

And yet....more than once I've sat in a bar drinking craft brew on tap and wishing I had my own to drink instead of paying $4 a pint for a dissatisfying experience.

************

Last summer I stumbled onto Metropolitan's "Arc Welder" which is a rye beer. It is dark as I make mine, and I was shocked at how close it was to the beer I brew. My reaction to the first sip: "Hey, this is Funky Rye!" FR is my beer. It's what I look for now if I'm buying something, rare though that may be.

************

I know that part of the answer here is to put one's beers into competitions so they can be judged anonymously. One of the guys above is going to be the brewmaster for a new microbrewery opening in the next year or so, and he's given me critical evaluation of my beers. What I tend to like more, he doesn't--and vice versa.

He always wants to know the style, and I can't help but wonder if he's ever just drunk a beer to enjoy it rather than rate it.

************

I've kind of decided that at this stage of my development as a homebrewer I need to put them out there and see what the broader response is from judges and knowledgeable others. My homebrew club is having a throwdown in April with a German Pils and a British Strong Ale. Both are within my capabilities. I'm planning to brew and enter them, we'll see what happens.

************

My son got into brewing before I did. He's a big reason I'm doing it. I brewed a SMASH w/ Maris Otter and East Kent Goldings and he really liked it a lot. Wanted to take a keg with him.

I brewed another w/ Maris Otter and Styrian Celeia. I think it presents a lot like a lager, it's crisp and clean. I sent one of these to my brewmaster friend, he critiqued it though in the end, I thought it was good at what it is, not lacking in what it isn't.

I like it enough that I brewed it again this weekend. I'm not sure what category of a competition it would belong in (a pale ale, I suppose), but oddly it strikes me as if it presents almost like a lager. A little more body than might be expected but still...

*************

So after reading all this....color me confused.

 

[jekeane]

A little column A a little column B?

You may very well, and likely are making good beer.

However, there are loads of people that aren't making good beer consistently.

As far as the critiques of your friends / home-brew club members. How many times have you been served a meal that you didn't care for by a friend or family member and then turned around and told them it was "good". It's in peoples nature to not tell the truth when it comes to stuff like food made by a friend.

That's where the competition judging comes in to me. Blind unbiased criticism can confirm whether you made a good beer or not. However, even in the judging process you are still left with the human factor of judge skill and treatment of your beer.

I recently had a english barleywine that I really liked and thought was a good example of the style that I entered into 3 comps. In June was judged a 20 saying "it was likely old" Same beer same run of bottles scored a 42 and 40 in both September and October. So you even have to take judging with a grain of salt.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Measuring beer by a taste and smell is fundamentally flawed and ironically the only measurement that matters. I definitely over look flaws in my own beer, but am fairly self aware and am able to be somewhat objective at least after the fact. I have had some really delicious beers from breweries like Bells and Russian River and I don't think I have that kind of game, but most of my beers are a good deal better than your mass craft beer companies like Sierra Nevada or New Belgium (which I like). Maybe its kind of cheating having this resource, but it just hasn't seemed that hard.

 

[John Eberly]

One of the greatest advantages of my homebrewing experience was to join a local HB club. We had monthly meetings and everybody brought 3-5 bottles of the designated style of the month. We then did tasting in flights of three beers at a time. Homebrews were expected, but commercial examples were OK if you did not have any of the style for the month. This gave examples for comparison.

The group was honest but not brutal. It was really educational to learn from other brewers as they described materials and processes that worked and how they affected the product. We'd often be able to sort out off flavors with several people tasting and discussing the beer.

Some of the brewers started with consistently poor product and no idea that their beers were objectionable, but with time they made great beer. There were some exceptional brewers involved but a wide range of palates - not everybody tastes things the same. After a while, you learn how to up your game.

I have relocated and need to find a new club, but I highly recommend taking this step if you want to improve your brewing.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I have heard that the club here in Phoenix is really a good one. I'm a pretty anti-club person. For example, I had a co-worker who joined a horse riding club and everyone in the club used English saddles. He was never really accepted into the club until he ditched his western saddle and got an English one. The peer pressure in clubs is subtle but pervasive. Look for example at your clubs process for critique. It sounds great, but is made for five gallon brewers with fermentation chambers. If I brought in 3-5 beers from my two gallon batch, I would be sharing 15-25% of every batch I made. Not that I am against that and certainly I get to taste their beers, but my batch turn around is about six weeks and I just don't have the room or gear to have a batch ready every month unless I got a temp controlled freezer/fridge fermentation chamber. Beyond that, every time someone found fault with my beer it would be due to my primeval process. I mean there was a guy here on HBT who KNEW that I made bad beer because my fermentation chamber isn't temp controlled by a an electronic controller. That kind of bias, I am afraid would leave me in a perpetual state of defensiveness. Is there anyone like me who wants to do his/her own thing that has been able to navigate the social pressure? I think its like so many social circumstances, if you don't know who the ****** is in your club, guess what...your it.

 

[motosapiens]

I've definitely made some beer that I thought was mediocre, OTOH, I still liked almost all of it better than 98% of commercially available beer, including big name micros. For sure, people won't always give you honest opinions, but when your keg is next to a deschutes keg at a party and people keep pouring from your keg, that's not a bad sign.

 

[max384]

I agree with the ugly baby syndrome thought.

Look at all the posts and threads about different commercial beers that are so terrible. How these largely successful breweries are putting out beer that is just garbage, yet so many of us dismiss 'small' details such as water chemistry, tight fermentation control, etc. and think our own brew is great. I think the chances that we're all producing beer that is superior to many commercial breweries is pretty damn unlikely.

What this really proves is that we're ultra critical of expensive craft brew that we're buying, but when we taste our own labor of love, it's tough to disappoint ourselves.

 

[NickTheGreat]

LOL. Ugly baby syndrome.

My beers are all fair to pretty good. But I don't mess with water chemistry or fermentation control and all that stuff.

I imagine that with a lot more work I could get a lot better beer.

Not sure what my rambling is about other than I should spend more money and think my beer is better! :

 

[secondbase]

I think I make pretty good beer but I want to make great beer, all the time. At the end of the day, drinking 5 gallons of mediocre beer is daunting and I find myself reaching for something else. I'm not afraid to dump an okay beer to replace it with something great.

 

[NSMikeD]

Measuring beer by a taste and smell is fundamentally flawed and ironically the only measurement that matters.

Awesome statement

 

[Stillraining]

I doubt I have made any great beers. But what I make is as good or better then many offerings on the store shelf's.
Someday Id like to say I made a great one. But I'm my toughest critic , seems I can always find a fault in there somewhere, no mater what it is I make.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I doubt I have made any great beers. But what I make is as good or better then many offerings on the store shelf's.
Someday Id like to say I made a great one. But I'm my toughest critic , seems I can always find a fault in there somewhere, no mater what it is I make.

I agree, the ugly baby syndrome can go both ways. You might have had something really special at some point and not know it because its just your homely homebrew.

 

[certaut]

brewed and found bees, tree leaves, assorted bugs in the boil kettle
boiled the mash during sparge, had Cheetos in the sparge,and my phone
used fish feed instead of hops (oops)
it all made beer, and I guess that my friends and neighbors like my ugly babies

 

[kh54s10]

I have to go somewhat against the grain and agree with the OP. In my case it seems that my municipal water is better than average. My beers may not make top marks in a competition, but I don't consider over 10% even mediocre. To me, and I am really the only one that matters, 50 - 60 percent of my beers are as good as or better than the average commercial beers. But, I don't buy the ones that are $20 a bomber, so I can't compare to those.... Of the rest 90 percent of them are quite good, 5 percent are OK and 4 percent are not quite good and only 1 percent are pretty bad. Out of 95 batches, I resigned one to using in beer bread and I have one that looks so disgusting I am not going to even try it. 4 months still opaque in too large a fermenter so I am sure it is oxidized. I was an experiment. One other bad one, but I drank it all was brewed with wild yeast from a rose bloom. It ended up sweet and super fruity tasting.

 

[Agtronic]

I dunno, I think it's easy to make beer that won't poison you or offend the average drinker, but in my 8-9 years of brewing maybe 5 batches per year, I have only had one or two batches I was really proud of. One was an imperial stout, and the other an APA. While the average beer drinker tells me my IPAs are great, I am never satisfied with them. So much so that I almost always have negative feelings about each batch before I ever try it. I'll be honest and say that lately it's kind of put a damper on my brewing and I brew much less than before. I also moved to AG maybe 6 batches ago and find that the added equipment and process makes the brew day excrutiatingly long. But many people have told me that I am my harshest critic when it comes to all my creative hobbies. I just seem to detect a certain signature flavour in every beer I brew, that only my beers have. Sometimes I have chlorophenol, sometimes not. I have gotten so deep (for my standards) into the technicalities of water and pH levels, all in an effort to nail that perfect flavor profile, and just when I think I'm close, I crack open one of my favourite commercial IPAs and it's like "yeah ok, not even close!".

But on the bright side, I've never had a dumper, nor have I ever brewed something that was terrible. It's mostly always pretty good, just never WOW!

Also, entered my first comp with a fruit beer (which I never cared to brew before, but happened to have some ready) and it did much better than I thought it would. Did 40/50 on two separate scorecards.

Maybe you will be harder to please as your taste for beer develops.

 

[darling]

I think a lot of this depends on your proximity to good beer in general. Anyone brewing in N America is overly spoiled for choice. You (in general) have local craft breweries within driving distance (don't drink and drive please). You have grocery stores stocking at least 10 drinkable stalwarts of the craft industry. If you don't live near a really great local brewery, you can always fall back on classics like Sierra Nevada or even Sam Adams.

If this is the case for you, your brewing experience is rife with sensory overload and a million and one examples of what you'd like to drink/make. Contrast that to those of us living in beer wastelands (I am in Romania).

Beer here is essentially a binary experience (and not on a good/bad selector). There is pilsener (blonda) and wheat (nefiltrata). That's it. If you're fortunate enough not to live in Bucharest, then unfortunately you do not live near a craft brewery. The grocery store has an immense beer aisle, even with a domestic/import split. But what do you find in the import section? Pilsener or wheat. German knock-offs that aren't fit for consumption; Belgians so over-priced I swear I've seen the same individual bottles in their cacophonous disarray on the shelf every week since I've been here (coming up on 125 weeks now...).

The ABInbev buyout is beginning too, but there are no local gems to be bought. There are Australian crafty beers that taste like someone farted in a Foster's and left in in the outback to boil. There are the usual suspects: Heineken (and every horrible thing they own), Grolsch (good for swing tops; bad for drinking), Guiness (long-time sellouts). Then there are the honey traps: Mort Subite - a Lambic! In my haste, I buy it, chill it, pour it, drink it, gag, spit, read the label, reel in disgust at the beer-flavored syrup whose main ingredient is an illusive "lambic aroma".

In short, if it's so hard to make bad beer, why are so many professional breweries doing it? I may be biased towards my beer. I have to be. I know I have made some mediocre ones, but with all the rat poison on sale, what recourse do I have? That being said, I do make a very nice IPA every now and again. I don't need BJCP scores to tell me how good it is, when my taste buds, worn out from long battles with the local swill, jump back to life at the first sip.

Long live Homebrewing!