Have you ever FAILED to make beer?

I've been brewing for quite a while now and I've been on the forum for years.
I have never failed to make beer after setting out to do so.
I have in my many many brews
Once had an infection and once dumped a brew because I didn't like the taste.
But I have have never actually failed to create beer?
I have had a failure once on a batch of wine......


Have any of you ever failed to brew beer when brewing?

umm...no. i've had a couple of infections, but they tasted rather good

uh yeah...last weekend I tried my hand at the Grocery and Produce Challenge...

I was planning to see it all the way through to yeast pitching...but after the second scorching of the mess....I dumped it.

You can read the twisted tale here (with piccies)...https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=734770&postcount=76

I've got one now (the porter, below) that has an off taste that hasn't gone away, but it is beer. It isn't horrible, in that you can drink it, but you (or at least I) won't enjoy it when you do drink it. I figure I'll eventually dump it but I keep hoping it'll get better; I also keep having another (or part of one, anyway) every now and again on the hope I'll be able to figure out what the off taste might be. I've gone through Palmer's list of off-tastes without any success at identification.

Rick

Never had a failure, knock wood - not even a bad batch.

I've had one infection that was so bad, I dumped the batch.
I've had 2 - 3 brews that I would have been ashamed to share with other people.
The rest (well over 99%) have been OK or better with about a dozen of them being astounding as judged by multiple tasters.

-a.

Had one batch that exploded in the bottle.

And the batch after it, I completely screwed up using sugar as an adjunct AND at bottling. It was at least usable for cooking.

Those were the two batches, 8 years ago, that lead to a hiatus from all things brew-related. Been back a year now with nothing but success after success

The AIPA that I sent out definitely borders on a dumper, but it still fermented, so again, I think I made beer. Just not good beer.

I've had a batch or two where I've said "This recipie needs some retooling", but I've never failed to make beer in 13 years. So far, as far as I can tell, I've never had anything but yeast working in my batches.

I just started making beer. I was on my second attempt to make beer. (first one is fine and fermenting in the shed) As I was pouring the boiling hot water into my bucket, the spigot broke off and burned my foot last night. All the wort spilled out and thats when i "failed to make beer". life lesson... cool the wort before putting into the bucket. i'm buying a freaking wort chiller next week, screw that. not gonna burn myself again!

The first attempt at making a rye IPA, my buddy decided to double the rye (he wasn't the sort to follow recipes). We ended up with an enormous raw bran muffin. We went as far as splitting the mash and hitting it with 180F water, but were unable to break it up enough to sparge.

We finally gave up and gave it to the deer.

Rick_R, the only batch I ever screwed up (Ive only done 11 so far) was also a porter and im pretty sure what happened was I followed a recipe in papazians book and it said to add gypsum which I did, well it was the wrong thing to add I should have added chalk but I didnt know anything about water chemistry yet and the beer came out too acidic. Its still drinkable and its gotten a little better with age but the the acidity makes the roasted notes very harsh.

One time I was finishing the mash and ready to sparge when I broke my thermometer in the mash. I mean it was in many pieces. I worried about the glass and what ever chemicals were in the thermometer so I dumped the whole thing!
Now every other brewing session of mine has made beer. Most of them were pretty darn good. But I also made 2 batches when I first started that were awful. They got dumped.

I have never had a batch go bad. I am extreme about being sanitary. I use a closed system for this reason.

I failed to make beer on Friday. And on Thursday. And the day before that. But I rectified the issue yesterday. Oh no! I'm failing so far today!

Oh. That's not what you meant?

My first partial mash. I hadn't read NEARLY enough about what I was doing, trying to read as I went. I finally said f-it and dumped the grians outside before wasting the rest of my ingredients.

I've made beer that wasn't very good, but it was still beer. I have yet to fail in making something that I'd call beer.

chriso said:

I failed to make beer on Friday. And on Thursday. And the day before that. But I rectified the issue yesterday. Oh no! I'm failing so far today!

Oh. That's not what you meant?

Click to expand...

+1 on that!

I had one ten gallon batch that fermented too high when the A/C failed. Technically it's still beer just not very good.

I still have my first beer that I never drank in a keg...should just throw it out.

Matt,
Did you ever taste it? That is the determining factor.

The first beer I ever made was a RIS. The LHBS guy told me it would be ready by christmas, (it was Thanksgiving weekend) and I didn't know enough to know how wrong he was. I think he just wanted to sell me $50 worth of ingredients. Any way, he gave me the worst brewing instruction sheet ever. It was extract with grains, only he never told me that I had to take the grains out before boiling... I still have that bottled tannic solution, hoping that one day it will be better, at least I can down 1 every month or so.
All in all though, it is still beer, just not very good beer.

One time I brewed a blackberry hefeweizen and had gotten it chilled and in the carboy ready to pitch when I accidentally set the carboy down too hard on the tile floor and cracked it. I had 5 gallons of purple, sticky wort ALL OVER my kitchen...bad deal to say the least. That was the first and last time that I tried to make a fruit beer.

I certainly have never failed to make beer....Some has been pretty bad...sometimes for a LONG TIME!
I made Jalapeño Ale with an American Ale Kit....it took 8 years to straighten out...and then only as a novelty. My Watermelon Weissbier that I bottled a few weeks ago got too hot and tastes like Everything bad that anyone has ever said to describe an over hot fermentation. I may try this watermelon thing again when I can lager.

My first batch tasted OK after a few weeks, but then got a little worst after each taste. By two months it tasted downright horrible, but I had some friends over, and somehow they drank all of it. (I think the shots starting off the party helped).
Never, ever throw ice into the hot wort to chill it, it may work but after tasting that beer I never want to chance it again.

There are two occasions where I failed to get to fermentation, so no beer. One was an equipment failure that led to dumping the mash, and the other was a scorched nasty wort and an infected starter (same day!) that got dumped out.

I have churned out a beer before that was undrinkable (I scorched the mash during a decoction), but it at least fermented so it counted as beer.

david_42 said:

The first attempt at making a rye IPA, my buddy decided to double the rye (he wasn't the sort to follow recipes). We ended up with an enormous raw bran muffin. We went as far as splitting the mash and hitting it with 180F water, but were unable to break it up enough to sparge.

We finally gave up and gave it to the deer.

Click to expand...

+1

Rye is very unforgiving stuff. I'm a little afraid of using it now. You can just see the stuff looking back at you threatening to gum up your mash. Wheat is nowhere near as bad.

I've certainly made batches that I didn't like, and even a few that I ended up dumping after five or six months due to lack of improvement, But there was this one time...

I own a bakery with my fiance, and that is where we brew. Usually, Tuesday afternoon is my time to "play with beer". About two months ago I was brewing my first attempt at a rye beer, and all was going well. I have been brewing all grain since October, and what I was worried about was the stuck sparge with the rye. It was time to chill the wort, and people started coming in to buy bread, of all things, so rather than use my immersion chiller, I stuck the pot of wort in the utility sink in the back, lid on, and water just at a trickle. At some point the customers were all gone, and I was sitting reading the paper when the trickling noise finally pierced my good ear, and I knew then it was over.

The lid had come off, the utility sink and the pot were both full of wort, and cold tap water, the sink having a few specks of other things as well. It only took a few seconds to realise this was a done deal. No stuck sparge (s s braid), but still no beer.

I voted no, but I have a few beers that are going to age for a while,
I might have to come back and say yes.

I have had the pleasure of sending a few beers out to be tasted,
the 4 of them received decent results.

other than bad ingredients and uncontrolled temps I have found that it is very hard to "not" make beer

I have had some that didn't taste so good. But I have never dumped a batch.