Killing kegs of mediocre beer

[Moose_MI]

I know many of you know what I'm talking about. Some will say you should dump it.... in fact Mr. Jamil Zainasheff encourages it and he is almost as good at brewing as me. I have dumped my share of beer and I'm not ashamed to admit it.....compost happens.

This thread is a tip of the hat to those who perceiver through 5 gallon of "meh".

I salute you. I wish I was there to knock out 12oz with you and celebrate what could have been....what should have been.....and most importantly ... WHAT WILL BE.... the next time....when we get the fermentation temp right or use a little less c60, or remember to adjust our water profile.

Yes my fellow brewer I am with you and raise a glass of "meh" from my kegerator and share your anxiousness to get to the bottom of what seems to be a 20g corny keg...

If you know what I'm talking about then I could really use your encouragement....I'm surrounded by "meh" at the moment.

 

[Murphys_Law]

I have powered through some meh beer, and I have dumped some meh beer because I needed the keg.

And I've powered through some meh beer and toward the end thought, "****, this turned into good beer" and then it was gone. And I was sad.

(Said in my best Hemingway voice).

 

[madscientist451]

Did a all LME porter experiment, wasn't all that great, blended in the glass with an American saison experiment that was somewhat blah....finally opened the tap into a carboy, added about 6 lbs of frozen sour cherries, its down in the basement bubbling away. I've also I've blended beer with cider and added Brett for a sour beer experiment.

 

[Sadu]

I have done this before and it sucks. But I find that most people don't have on tap access to amazing beer like we home brewers do so what we consider meh, others might find it on par with whatever macro swill they would be drinking. Or at least something cold and wet that contains alcohol.
I just give beer I dont like to my non-choosy friends, tell them straight up that I'm giving it away because I don't like it or its somehow flawed.
Unless the beer is terrible you still save them $20 or whatever and it beats dumping.

 

[catdaddy66]

I have quaffed many a mediocre beer because I had spent the money and effort in making it already. I have dumped very few batches, mostly due to infection. But one batch was wholly undrinkable due to poor temp control during fermentation. I am not too proud to drink average...!

Since I went the all grain route my mediocreness has been much rarer than it ever was with extract brewing.

 

[Brownalemikie]

I say have a party....nobody I know will turn down FREE beer. It will be all gone before you know it

 

[Murphys_Law]

I say have a party....nobody I know will turn down FREE beer. It will be all gone before you know it

I wouldn't want to give my friends and family mediocre beer! Let them think I brew good beer and keep the crap for myself.

 

[chef1978]

I know many of you know what I'm talking about. Some will say you should dump it.... in fact Mr. Jamil Zainasheff encourages it and he is almost as good at brewing as me. I have dumped my share of beer and I'm not ashamed to admit it.....compost happens.

This thread is a tip of the hat to those who perceiver through 5 gallon of "meh".

I salute you. I wish I was there to knock out 12oz with you and celebrate what could have been....what should have been.....and most importantly ... WHAT WILL BE.... the next time....when we get the fermentation temp right or use a little less c60, or remember to adjust our water profile.

Yes my fellow brewer I am with you and raise a glass of "meh" from my kegerator and share your anxiousness to get to the bottom of what seems to be a 20g corny keg...

If you know what I'm talking about then I could really use your encouragement....I'm surrounded by "meh" at the moment.

i recently brew 100% vienna malt lager,build the water from scratch,fermented in 10C all this to say i put lots of love in it,in the end it was good,but i think i screwed up somewhere,and i had chill haze ,this damn thing just wouldnt settle ,even filtration didnt help,i wanted this beer to be really clear,for my friend birthday,any ways i drank few glasses,DUMPED the rest and re brew it.

 

[Braufessor]

i recently brew 100% vienna malt lager,build the water from scratch,fermented in 10C all this to say i put lots of love in it,in the end it was good,but i think i screwed up somewhere,and i had chill haze ,this damn thing just wouldnt settle ,even filtration didnt help,i wanted this beer to be really clear,for my friend birthday,any ways i drank few glasses,DUMPED the rest and re brew it.

Not sure what you did with your water.... but, one thing that has seemed to help me with my low mineral water in lager beers is I add 100% of the salts/minerals to the mash and none to the sparge water. having higher calcium in the mash seems to help on the clarity side down the road. Calcium deficient wort can end up with a haze do to oxalate.... putting all the minerals in the mash has seemed to help me on that end.... I have had the same problem in the past with lager beer that just did not seem to want to drop clear.

As for "meh" beer..... we have all been there. I have kind of gotten to the point where I brew so much that I just end up with 4-6 good beers ready to be on tap, so the mediocre ones just sit "on deck" until they come around, I get desperate or I dump them.

 

[chef1978]

Not sure what you did with your water.... but, one thing that has seemed to help me with my low mineral water in lager beers is I add 100% of the salts/minerals to the mash and none to the sparge water. having higher calcium in the mash seems to help on the clarity side down the road. Calcium deficient wort can end up with a haze do to oxalate.... putting all the minerals in the mash has seemed to help me on that end.... I have had the same problem in the past with lager beer that just did not seem to want to drop clear.

As for "meh" beer..... we have all been there. I have kind of gotten to the point where I brew so much that I just end up with 4-6 good beers ready to be on tap, so the mediocre ones just sit "on deck" until they come around, I get desperate or I dump them.

i had 50% in mash and 50% in the sparge water,i will definitely do this next time ,good tip,thanks.

 

[Moose_MI]

Happy to report I kicked my Belgian Wheat IPA last night.....you can see a picture of it....in the dictionary....look under "meh"

Of course this opened up a spot for the nugget IPA I had ready to go.....much better !

 

[Jtk78]

I don't keg, but my first batch less than "meh". I muscled through it, but I was probably drinking my third batch before I finished that. I have a nut brown ale right now that sucks. It's been in the bottle 6 weeks and I can barely get through one. I'm going to forget about it for a month or three and try it again. If it doesn't become better by Christmas, I'm gonna have to send it out to pasture. Id much rather drink my way through it though. I feel it's kinda like finishing the food on my plate if I'm the one that put it there.

 

[Morrey]

I figure everyone has brewed a "Meh" beer, and if you haven't, you eventually will brew one based on the law of averages. And Meh (to me) doesn't necessarily mean it is infected or needs to be tossed. It may be a beer that was fermented at a temp other than ideal, a hop combo that was experimental and didn't hit the mark....or a variety of other Meh issues such as I simply didn't like the beer.

I keg and have 10 taps going currently. I have a beer or two that seem "bottomless" and just keep hanging on in a Meh sort of way. My wife is a master blender and will try a variety of taps to use the beers we have available. Sometimes she hits on a combo that is pretty darn decent and I'll work toward building a recipe to create a style she has blended. Rare but possible.

So my answer to Meh beer is letting my wife "blend" it since I typically won't roll this way. May be too much of a purist.

 

[Nagorg]

I dumped the rest of a bag of malt that I blame for the batch of "meh" I'm currently powering through... However, the longer it sits in the keg, the less "meh" it seems to be.

 

[seatazzz]

I've got 5 kegs, 2 currently are full of Orange wit, one is half full of Pliny clone, one about to kick of Arrogant Bastard, and one that is almost 1/2 full of jalapeno amber I brewed for the husband. He finally told me to dump it as it's just too spicy (there's jalapenos & lime in a bag in the keg, bad idea). A couple of weeks ago I dumped a FULL keg of a brown experiment I did with sugar carbing, soured and gross. I hate to dump them if they're moderately drinkable, but at this point there's always something new coming down the pike that will (hopefully) taste better.

 

[Anon111]

Id much rather drink my way through it though. I feel it's kinda like finishing the food on my plate if I'm the one that put it there.

Hear hear! Since my largest pot is about 1 gallon, that's all that I can brew. A scale with an accuracy of 1 gram is not really accurate if you need 2 grams of a specific hop... Since april (my day 0) I've only brewed 1 satisfying batch, several mehs en 1 bad batch. Consisting of nothing but geisers. I flushed most of that lot.

But I'll never learn if I don't experience. Drink through that bit-too-sweet ale. Chew through that yeasty Belgian blond. Reboot that obnoxiously sweet mead. But throwing away? Only when it's BAD.

And I expect my definition of BAD to be redefined in 20-something more batches. Because that's what learning does. Learning changes things :rockin:

 

[TLaffey]

I wouldn't want to give my friends and family mediocre beer! Let them think I brew good beer and keep the crap for myself.

^^^ like that! Parties are for celebrating success!

 

[secondbase]

If my partner doesn't want to drink it, I'll dump it. He usually drinks my mediocre or flawed beers so I haven't poured too many down the drain.

 

[dpeters]

Yep, I am working my way thru 10 gallons right now. Our club got 8 pounds of experimental hops to try and I took Lemon Zest thinking this would be a good hop for my Blond Ale well I ended up naming the beer "Lemon Pith Me Off" instead of a lemon zest taste it has a lemon pith taste. I took a few growlers to a get together and the people that tried it did not think anything was wrong with it, we are our own worst critics.

 

[oceanic_brew]

I know what to suffer through. It amazes me how much beer changes after a couple weeks in the kegs.

I've had one beer with a full on infection, racked from under neath the pellicle, all I could taste was a weird grassy/fart thing going on. After two weeks in the Keg it was delicious.

Most infected beers I pour out. I also tried to do a very American citrus hoppy strawberry wheat beer with 3068 yeast. Why?!!! The beer ended up being insanely slick and thick, huge mouthfeel, there' was no color from the berries, absolutely no head, looked like orange juice tasted like garbage.Didn't change at all after a month of cold conditioning and a month of back out on the brew floor.

Crazy beer that was.

 

[Nagorg]

Most infected beers I pour out.

Knock on wood but I can't say I've had an infection (contamination) yet. So that certainly hasn't been the source of "meh" so far in my brews...

(And yes I realize I shouldn't have posted that... Guess I'll be boiling all my gear soon as a precaution! lol)

 

[hotwatermusic]

I think if you can't commit to 5 gallons of meh then you don't have the stomach for experimentation.
I've lucked/educated guessed into some of my best and worst beers and it's worth some unspectacular tap fodder for the occasional moment of virtuosity.
The bad part is that the drinking buddies drain all the good and leave you with the meh without qualm.

 

[JimEb]

Just did this today. For a while now I was choking down an Irish Red that turned out much more like a robust Brown Ale. Seems the 'meh' beers have a never ending keg. Despite recruiting some help to kick it, it just wouldn't die.

I needed the kegerator space and figured, why waste time with sucky beers when I can make something better.

I also got about a case of a banana beer that turned out pretty nasty. I've been dumping it as I needed the bottles. I keep thinking I should let a few mellow out for some time and see if it becomes drinkable.

 

[BrewKnob]

I know many of you know what I'm talking about. Some will say you should dump it.... in fact Mr. Jamil Zainasheff encourages it and he is almost as good at brewing as me. I have dumped my share of beer and I'm not ashamed to admit it.....compost happens.

This thread is a tip of the hat to those who perceiver through 5 gallon of "meh".

I salute you. I wish I was there to knock out 12oz with you and celebrate what could have been....what should have been.....and most importantly ... WHAT WILL BE.... the next time....when we get the fermentation temp right or use a little less c60, or remember to adjust our water profile.

Yes my fellow brewer I am with you and raise a glass of "meh" from my kegerator and share your anxiousness to get to the bottom of what seems to be a 20g corny keg...

If you know what I'm talking about then I could really use your encouragement....I'm surrounded by "meh" at the moment.

Have a party.

 

[Moose_MI]

I think if you can't commit to 5 gallons of meh then you don't have the stomach for experimentation.
I've lucked/educated guessed into some of my best and worst beers and it's worth some unspectacular tap fodder for the occasional moment of virtuosity.
The bad part is that the drinking buddies drain all the good and leave you with the meh without qualm.

Well said sir...well said....

 

[Sadu]

I think if you can't commit to 5 gallons of meh then you don't have the stomach for experimentation.
I've lucked/educated guessed into some of my best and worst beers and it's worth some unspectacular tap fodder for the occasional moment of virtuosity.
The bad part is that the drinking buddies drain all the good and leave you with the meh without qualm.

This is pretty much THE argument for 1 gallon batches.

Although I do agree, I don't mind powering through some meh in order to achieve greatness. Just that 1 gallon of meh is better than 5.

 

[Weezy]

In today's day and age, you can just dry hop any mediocre beer with citra and people will guzzle it.

 

[Eucrid]

I only drink mediocre beer until something better is ready to take its place. Then it goes down the drain.

 

[Kee]

This is pretty much THE argument for 1 gallon batches.

Although I do agree, I don't mind powering through some meh in order to achieve greatness. Just that 1 gallon of meh is better than 5.

When I moved (and left my equipment behind) I switched from 5 gallon batches to 3 gallon batches. There are advantages.

 

[mongoose33]

I have one of those beers on tap now. It was a variation of a recipe I like that....didn't quite turn out. My son and I both agree: it just doesn't do anything well. It's not offensive, it's just....meh.

I have 5 beers on tap--and I don't ever pull the handle for Meh. Problem is, I've had friends over and their opinion is somewhat different than mine.

I have a dark lager in the fermenter right now, brewed yesterday. Going to town, it is. As soon as it's ready to keg, "Meh" is giving up its place in the keezer to "Darth Lager."

And given that I have several other beers I'd rather drink on tap, I'm afraid "Meh" isn't going to lighten up much before the keg is pulled. I'll probably bottle some of them just to see if anything happens over time, but I consider it a learning experience--one whose value I'll reflect upon as I watch the beer swirl down the drain.

 

[thunderwagn]

In today's day and age, you can just dry hop any mediocre beer with citra and people will guzzle it.

Is it bad to admit I've actually considered doing this? I've got a keg of meh on tap now. It's a red, and while there's nothing really wrong with it, it's just not anything great. I have been thinking of just dry hopping with several oz of homegrown hops to see if I can livin it up a bit.

 

[Weezy]

Hehe. Do it. Enjoy.

 

[daveMN]

I have a Meh Brown Ale that I'm going to dump this weekend to make room for an Alt. Still almost full since it's so "meh". I'm down to a 6-pack of my last extract batch from 2 years ago. I keep sampling it and it still tastes like an oxidized extract batch. I have the opposite problem with a Marzen that I only have 3 gallons of and I'm already anxious about it running out.

 

[Murphys_Law]

I have one of those beers on tap now. It was a variation of a recipe I like that....didn't quite turn out. My son and I both agree: it just doesn't do anything well. It's not offensive, it's just....meh.

I have 5 beers on tap--and I don't ever pull the handle for Meh. Problem is, I've had friends over and their opinion is somewhat different than mine.

I have a dark lager in the fermenter right now, brewed yesterday. Going to town, it is. As soon as it's ready to keg, "Meh" is giving up its place in the keezer to "Darth Lager."

And given that I have several other beers I'd rather drink on tap, I'm afraid "Meh" isn't going to lighten up much before the keg is pulled. I'll probably bottle some of them just to see if anything happens over time, but I consider it a learning experience--one whose value I'll reflect upon as I watch the beer swirl down the drain.

I'm in that same boat now. I've made several wheat beers using orange blossom honey, which my wife loves. I thought I'd try using honey malt once just...because, why not? I read mixed reviews and wanted to try it for myself (isn't this a great option?!). Well, I'm drinking one now and it's a decent beer but just not loving it. I will stick to the orange blossom honey for my next honey beer.

The wife thinks it's OK but not her favorite. My next beer up is a stout which I'll bottle (want to give most of it away to some friends) but after that the Honey (Malt) Wheat beer will be a drainer to make room for something I really want to drink.

It's not a bad beer, but I'd much rather have something on tap I really like. I too have 5 taps but I want to make sure the 5 taps have beer I want to drink and not a meh beer. I'm not too proud or cheap to throw $30 down the drain to make room for something else, I guess.

 

[mongoose33]

I'm not too proud or cheap to throw $30 down the drain to make room for something else, I guess.

Most of my beers cost circa $20 or so, but the cost I hate losing is the time!

A 5-hour brew day for...naught? Horrors!

 

[javert]

I made a Golden Ale most of it being Great Western Malting's Premium 2-row malt which had failed before. Changed hops from EKG to Perle, thinking it was responsible for it being meh.

Turned out the culprit was the M79 Burton Union yeast, which had a esthery flavor reminiscent of hefeweizens. It was heartbreaking because clarity, mouthfeel, color and alcohol content were great, but the flavor to car or indoors' scented spray flavor dominates completely.

Might reserve some of them but the rest are probably going down the drain.

 

[Murphys_Law]

Most of my beers cost circa $20 or so, but the cost I hate losing is the time!



A 5-hour brew day for...naught? Horrors!

I currently don't work so making beer is a great way for me to spend an afternoon! I could make beer every day and dump it just to make it another day!

If/when I go back to the working class then my time may be more valuable.