Made a bad beer recently?

[daksin]

I'm sure y'all have done it. I'm not talking infected or oxidized or anything- just a beer that you thought you had nailed down and then were loathe to drink it once it came around in the pipeline.

Mine's an altbier. I'm not a lager brewer or even a connoisseur of German styles, but I thought I had a handle on this one, but as I'm sitting here tasting it, I want to pitch it out even though I have other empty kegs. Looks like it's getting the "extended lagering" treatment- really bad, and I don't expect it to get even a little better.

Experienced brewers- what beer have you made lately that just didn't pass muster?

 

[Obliviousbrew]

MIne is a tripel, it´s been in bottles for a few months now, not infected or something like that just nasty... the last time i use dry yeast (I hate you safbrew s-33) I know it happens but this is my first bad beer and I don´t really want to throw it down the sink. They say time heals everything I don´t think there is enough time in the rest of my life to make that sh** drinkable.

 

[daksin]

Interesting- my only other inexplicably bad beer was also a tripel (pretty standard 80% pils 20% sugar- no S-33 though). Weird.

 

[Varmintman]

In my quest for lower alcohol I did get to a point that I dumped a batch. I think life is just to short to drink a beer that sucks.

But saying that I would have to say now the worst beer I have is the one that I just finished and the best beer is the next one in my hand.

 

[Obliviousbrew]

Interesting- my only other inexplicably bad beer was also a tripel (pretty standard 80% pils 20% sugar- no S-33 though). Weird.

Pretty close to mine.. I blame s-33 and the my poor choice of yeast... belgian areall about the yeast, I chilled one last nigth and having my breakfest now while I heat my strike water: the same s**t a little less nasty, too sweet for my tastes just nothing belgian in it plus this awfull yeast esters... it is a little better or "less worst" than before but it´s a dumper, I´ll just use it for cooking but I´m not even sure this crap wouldn´t ruin my food too.
Just a little heart broken here, I know every brewer has a bad batch at least once in their lifetime... but anyway it is terrible I have to dump this batch but I don´t have the heart to do it. I often hear the "never dump a batch" topic or the "time heals everything" but I don´t see that happening in this decade.

 

[m_c_zero]

Smokey bacon porter, enough said.

 

[Whattawort]

Made a honey wit once. Let it ferm WAY too warm and it ended up tasting like banana bread. I like banana bread....when it's in bread form. Back in my extract days, in one beer I scorched the extract, had 3 boil overs, and kept the original high hop schedule. That was a bad beer. I muscled through it and finished the batch, but it wasn't an easy task. I just can't bring myself to dump beer.

 

[Homercidal]

While back I brewed a Belgian Golden Strong Ale. Half batch with a full batch worth of bittering hops on accident. When they were young the carbonation was hit or miss and they were AWFULly bitter.

A couple of years of forgetting about them and the bitterness is gone. Almost like a funky barleywine.

This would be great if I thought a funky barleywine tasted good! I might be able to choke down the last few bottles, or maybe use them for cooking.

More recently I had a Blonde Ale that fermented Notty too warm. Just not good. I drank about half and decided I needed the keg too badly. Out it went.

 

[lespaul23]

Someone gave me a amber ale extract kit. I didnt want to make it, I wanted to do something different with it. I doubled the recipe and gave it a shot. Used us 05, 2 packs. Og was 1.096 fg was 1.028. Beer is too sweet so I pitched 5grams of another dry yeast I had. Hoping it would clean up. Did nothing. I think the yeast died in the alcohol. Ended up dry hopping then filtering to bottling bucket. Pitched 5grams more yeast for bottling. Im afraid, very afraid. It was bad when I bottled it. But its like 8.9% though.

 

[weirdboy]

My most recent failure was a witbier I made in May 2012. It wasn't truly awful and didn't have any real technical flaws, but I didn't get any enjoyment out of drinking it at all, and ended up dumping it even though I have something like 15 kegs so I'm never really worried about making space for something else.

Depending upon how you look at it, it's either more recent or less recent since I didn't try it until a few months ago, but I made an imperial stout almost exactly a year ago that I aged in a bourbon barrel that turned out pretty bad. I think I still have that one in a keg. I left it in the barrel waaaaay too long and it's like drinking a murky black whiskey. I can't even really tell if there's off flavors in the beer, because all I can taste is the booze. I was planning to eventually brew another stout and then blend some back into that to see if I can make something more balanced that tastes decent, but so far I haven't really been motivated.

 

[annoyingrob]

I accidentally used a significant amount of Vienna in a recipe rather than Victory malt. The beer ended up tasting almost like peanuts.

Surprisingly after a few months it tasted really good.

 

[Revvy]

My last batch of kentucky common made wit us-05...With low grav beers and sometimes fermenting at the "correct" temps you would normally want to ferment a yeast at, 05 sometimes imparts a "stone fruit" or "Peachy" taste to beer. Especially if there's not a lot of roasty malts to hide it. This last batch, brewed in the low 60 has it. So it sits in a keg, and I tend to have to force myself to drink it. It's not a bad beer, and I didn't do anything "wrong" it's just not a beer I enjoy as much as other versions of it, or other beers.

 

[Qhrumphf]

My last batch of kentucky common made wit us-05...With low grav beers and sometimes fermenting at the "correct" temps you would normally want to ferment a yeast at, 05 sometimes imparts a "stone fruit" or "Peachy" taste to beer. Especially if there's not a lot of roasty malts to hide it. This last batch, brewed in the low 60 has it. So it sits in a keg, and I tend to have to force myself to drink it. It's not a bad beer, and I didn't do anything "wrong" it's just not a beer I enjoy as much as other versions of it, or other beers.

That's not the first time I've heard "peachy" coming from US-05. I've never experienced it. Then again, I've never tried a session beer with it, or even that cold of a ferment.

I had a dumper that I fermented to hot years ago, my second batch ever that was meant to be a Tripel that I didn't control fermentation temp and ended up fermenting around 90° and ended up as rocket fuel even after almost a year of aging.

Every hard cider I've done has just been awful. And my latest is my Strawberry Blonde. Granted I opted to rack to secondary for strawberries, then rack to tertiary to clear out the fruit gunk and oxidized it a bit in the process, but leaving the light cardboard notes aside, the base beer is bland and the strawberries are a background note at best (I know strawberries are subtle to begin with, but this is ridiculous). Not dumpworthy, but it's the "it's got alcohol in it so I'll drink it but I won't particularly enjoy it" beer of the month.

 

[chumpsteak]

I made 10 gallons of a new basic cascade pale ale I was working on and fermented 5 gallons with Notty and 5 gallons with US05. Drank the Notty batch first and it came out pretty good. Put the US05 batch on tap and it smells and tastes like a combination of green grape and peach juice. Fermented at 64 degrees thinking it would be a good temp for both yeasts, but I'll never go below 68 with US05 again. The thing is that the beer is actually really good once you get past the grapey/peach part, but I'm probably going to end up dumping it soon. Had a buddy try it last night and even though he didn't say anything about the fruitiness I felt bad for even letting him drink it.

 

[Obliviousbrew]

That's not the first time I've heard "peachy" coming from US-05. I've never experienced it. Then again, I've never tried a session beer with it, or even that cold of a ferment.

I had a dumper that I fermented to hot years ago, my second batch ever that was meant to be a Tripel that I didn't control fermentation temp and ended up fermenting around 90° and ended up as rocket fuel even after almost a year of aging.

Every hard cider I've done has just been awful. And my latest is my Strawberry Blonde. Granted I opted to rack to secondary for strawberries, then rack to tertiary to clear out the fruit gunk and oxidized it a bit in the process, but leaving the light cardboard notes aside, the base beer is bland and the strawberries are a background note at best (I know strawberries are subtle to begin with, but this is ridiculous). Not dumpworthy, but it's the "it's got alcohol in it so I'll drink it but I won't particularly enjoy it" beer of the month.

I had that thing happen to me with US-05, unsupected peachy esters in a APA... it surprised me but I found lots of people with the same problem, I also fermented in cold side. I´ve tried the same thing with Wyeast 1056 and it doesn´t get peachy at all... it supossed to be the same strain rigth? weird.

 

[Qhrumphf]

I had that thing happen to me with US-05, unsupected peachy esters in a APA... it surprised me but I found lots of people with the same problem, I also fermented in cold side. I´ve tried the same thing with Wyeast 1056 and it doesn´t get peachy at all... it supossed to be the same strain rigth? weird.

If I'm going with American Ale/Cal Ale I usually use 1056 and ferment cold (64ish) as well. Definitely no peach. Last time I used US-05 it was maybe 67-68. I don't know if they're the same exact strain, like genetically identical, or if they're just very very close.

 

[Revvy]

I had that thing happen to me with US-05, unsupected peachy esters in a APA... it surprised me but I found lots of people with the same problem, I also fermented in cold side. I´ve tried the same thing with Wyeast 1056 and it doesn´t get peachy at all... it supposed to be the same strain rigth? weird.

Yooper was the one that pointed out that fermenting 05 on the cool side (which is the NORMAL range of most yeasts) can bring it out. But I've only noticed it in really low grav beers that didn't have roasted grain. It kinda sucks, because for years 05 has been my goto yeast for most beers. It's just that as I got into doing session beers it doesn't seem to be all that useful, and takes away from the beer.

 

[Obliviousbrew]

The beer that I´mtaling about was an APA 1045 OG 30 IBUS, I first tought it was the hops (it was a single hop cascade) but the variety didn´t seem peachy, so I blame the yeast... two weeks later I re-brew it using 1056 instead: same recipe, same hops, same grain, same temperature control and no peach at all... US-05 it is my backup yeast and it has been the yeast that I´ve used the most so far I just don´t get it

 

[TyroneSweetlick]

Made a maple wheat from one of the clone recipe books last fall. Did some good research (or so I thought) on how much maple to use, type, and when to add it.

Nearly made me vomit. Nasty, nasty nasty. Extremely sweet, next to no maple flavor, and that's as much as I could get out of it before spitting it out. Let it sit for a few months and nobody else bit either. Tossed it. It sucked, but it wasn't going to improve.

The recipe sounded really good, too. Oh well, back to the hops.

 

[daksin]

Made a maple wheat from one of the clone recipe books last fall. Did some good research (or so I thought) on how much maple to use, type, and when to add it.

Nearly made me vomit. Nasty, nasty nasty. Extremely sweet, next to no maple flavor, and that's as much as I could get out of it before spitting it out. Let it sit for a few months and nobody else bit either. Tossed it. It sucked, but it wasn't going to improve.

The recipe sounded really good, too. Oh well, back to the hops.

Yea- me too. I've got a pound and a half of bravo and northern brewer, and a pound each of cascade, centennial, simcoe, and citra to use up this year. So stoked to be making some hoppy beers again.

 

[Mojzis]

I made a blueberry beer for my brother a long time ago and it turned out well. Went the cheap route and used extract. It turned out great.

So I made it again 2 months or so after but went with blackberry extract. Well this bottle gave instructions to use twice the amount I did last time. I was hesitant but in the end decided the manufacturer knows best. Well it turned out disgusting. It had a nasty solvent over the top extract flavor. I set it aside. Here it is 5 months later and it's still gross. Drinkable this time but still solvent like extract taste. Only one case left. Working my way through it. I think it's safe to say this experience turned me off of extract.

But that's not the only beer that didn't turn out well. I made Belgian wheat that the gf loves and I hate. I keep feeding those to her. A siason that turned out a little sour. she loves those too. And a pumpkin beer that lost its freshness that i can hardly choke down. I ran out of my favorite beers and have been sulkingly making my way through the not so good beer. Only a few left!