Are Our Failures Really Failures?

[Clint Yeastwood]

I'm drinking my first Imperial Stout, partly to get rid of it. It's sweeter and less bitter than I wanted, so I've been thinking of it as an unsuccessful attempt.

The more I drink it, the more I realize it's actually delicious. It's just not exactly what I wanted. There are a lot of really sweet, heavy beers out there that people think are wonderful. There are probably a lot of people who would love this stuff just as it is. I'm changing the recipe, but I just realized I made a fantastic beer.

Has anyone else here had a revelation like this after making a beer that wasn't exactly on target?

 

[brewbama]

Of course. I brewed an all Veterans Blend hop Pale Ale once that was really not that good out of the gate. So I skipped over it for other beers on tap. About a month + later I tasted it again and found a totally different beer. I found myself pouring it over and over again.

I recently brewed a Festbier that was all jacked up. Just not right. So, I got some of that tropical fruit purée and turned it into a fruit beer. I submitted it to a competition and it scored a 38. Not bad for a failure. Then, I took it one step further and added some lactic acid to it at bottling for a soured fruit beer. I submitted that to competition and it scored a 39 and took second place at its table. That failure turned out ok.

 

[Skeeter686]

I've had some similar experiences. Both where the beer was, apparently, too young initially but then became quite good after a bit of aging, and also a couple of beers that didn't turn out like I'd wanted but, after the initial disappointment, I decided that I actually found them quite tasty... just different from what I'd intended.

 

[Bramling Cross]

It's only a failure if you don't learn from it.

My path toward a half decent Dark Mild recipe is akin to one of those compilations of early rocketry mishaps that they like to show at the beginning of most Apollo Project documentaries. Amidst all that failure, I learned a lot. Still more to learn, though.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I would not make this again, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who would think it was fantastic.

 

[Tony B]

I have only been brewing for about a year now, so this sentiment describes the majority of my brews to this point. I haven’t had any dumpers and haven’t been blown away, as I hope to someday be by one of my own beers.
That said, I’ve learned that most of the styles I’ve brewed definitely benefit from a little more time in the package before I decide whether or not it was any good. It’s really cool to taste them as they evolve, even if it’s not exactly what I was hoping for.

 

[mac_1103]

I would not make this again, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who would think it was fantastic.

So out of curiosity, what were you hoping for? My favorite commercial imperial stouts really are neither bitter nor sweet. Lots of IBUs to balance FG high enough that lots of people would think they had a stuck fermentation. That's what I'm going for when I brew a big stout - chewy and malty but not sweet. Sometimes I come pretty close.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I started with my own stout (not imperial) recipe and scaled it up. That recipe has some crystal in it to balance the bitterness and sourness. When I scaled the recipe up, it came out sweeter than I wanted, and it was not bitter enough. I am cutting the crystal malt back. It's also very thick, so I am using less oatmeal and more base grain in the next batch.

I'm switching from EKG to Citra, and I'm shooting for 76 IBU, close to what a guy from North Coast Brewing recommended.

I wanted something sort of like Old Rasputin, but based on my own stout recipe. Not a clone.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

One of the things I like about this beer is that you can't taste the alcohol right away, but in a short time, you feel the heat coming up.

 

[MaxStout]

Aside from a few real failures (which went down the drain), most of my "failures" were when I was aiming for one style, but ended up with something good, albeit in another style. A few IPAs that didn't reach the desired bitterness. So I called them APAs and enjoyed them anyway.

In the end, it's beer. I learn from it and tweak the recipe for next time.

 

[worlddivides]

They're "failures" in the sense that you failed to achieve what you were trying to achieve. But that doesn't mean they can't be good. Some of my favorite commercial beers are ones where they accidentally contaminated a barrel of beer with bacteria and ended up souring it but it tasted good so they released it anyway. In some of those cases, I like the failure better than the success. It all comes down to taste.

 

[hout17]

It's a "Bob Ross" happy accident! Glad it came out good for you.

 

[BrewZer]

It's like landing an airplane -- any landing you can walk away from was successful, and if you can re-use the airplane, it's a good landing.

Any beer you can drink is successful, and if you'd make it again, it's a good one.

 

[corkybstewart]

2 come to mind. I brewed an English style pale ale that was horrible. I turned one keg into great malt vinegar, but I lost track of the second keg. A year later I found it in the back of one of my kegerators, recognized it as the second of the terrible batch. Before I poured it out I figured I should at least taste it and it was delicious. Later I realized that the problem was that after a month the yeast hadn't dropped out, that was the off taste.
The second lesson was worse. A friend and I brewed 4 10 gallon batches in one weekend. We had temp control for 3 batches but we figured my garage was cold enough for the 4th batch. It wasn't. That 10 gallons was full of phenols, higher alcohols and other assorted off flavors that no length of cold storage could fix. We each forced ourselves to drink our keg just to learn our lesson.

 

[Miraculix]

I'm drinking my first Imperial Stout, partly to get rid of it. It's sweeter and less bitter than I wanted, so I've been thinking of it as an unsuccessful attempt.

The more I drink it, the more I realize it's actually delicious. It's just not exactly what I wanted. There are a lot of really sweet, heavy beers out there that people think are wonderful. There are probably a lot of people who would love this stuff just as it is. I'm changing the recipe, but I just realized I made a fantastic beer.

Has anyone else here had a revelation like this after making a beer that wasn't exactly on target?

I just recently tried to make a mild with a partygile from a Belgian triple. Didn't work out at all. Way too light in colour and too bitter too.

One of the best bitters I have brewed up until today! Or maybe it's better described as an amber ale.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Failures are the ones that get dumped down the drain, but even those hopefully you learned something from.

If you're not learning from your mistakes, it's not the beer that's a failure.

 

[jmstone617]

I brewed last night, set the heat wrap around the fermenter because it gets cold in the basement this time of year, and headed off to bed. Woke up to the beer at 80 degrees F according to my tilt and realized I never put the temperature probe in the thermowell so the heat wrap had been on the last 6 hours

 

[Spartan1979]

I brewed my German Pils earlier this year and inadvertently printed out a previous copy of the recipe using hops that had higher AA%. So it had smaller hop additions than what I should have added. The beer was fine as the grain bill and fermentation were what they should have been, it just wasn't a German Pils. I named it "Some Kind of German Lager."

 

[stamandster]

Never a failure if you learn something, good or bad

 

[DonT]

My last "failure" won a silver at a local comp. I was brewing an NZ pils using Lutra and I decided to do something crazy... I had a year old pack of Cosmic Punch I co-pitched with the Lutra. My plan was to ferment at 82F, thinking that would too warm for the Cosmic and I wouldn't get much from it.... Well, my fermenter's heater decided to not work so it fermented at ambient temp which was low to mid 70"s. When it finished it was hazy, but tasted fine so I didn't dump it. After a couple of weeks it started to clear up. I was entering two other brews so I entered this one too. By the time it was judged it had dropped clear... go figure

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

To be clear, I was originally talking about beers we brew that are not quite what WE wanted, yet which OTHER people would love and consider home runs.

Of course, I do agree that beers that seem like losers to US at first sometimes turn out to be winners after some keg time. No doubt at all about that!

 

[stamandster]

@Clint Yeastwood you said "The more _I_ drink it, the more _I_ realize it's actually delicious. It's just not exactly what _I_ wanted" So I think people assumed you meant personal experience with their own brews from their own viewpoint. So to clarify, you want to know if failures were viewed as successes by other even though they weren't intentional. Correct?

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Yeah, I just wanted to be clear. I didn't want anyone to think I was wasting people's time with another, "Wow, this beer is better than I thought," thread.

I pumped this beer up to 12 psi, and it's a lot better now. But my keezer is at 35, and I think this beer needs 40.

 

[mac_1103]

This is the internet. Wasting time is kinda the point.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Tell us more, at length.

 

[505-Brewer]

I brewed a lemon Saison using an organic lemon powder from Amazon. It tastes like Pledge smells. I keep drinking it thinking it might clean up my foul mouth. F’n doubt it…..,,

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Yeah, I just wanted to be clear. I didn't want anyone to think I was wasting people's time with another, "Wow, this beer is better than I thought," thread.

I pumped this beer up to 12 psi, and it's a lot better now. But my keezer is at 35, and I think this beer needs 40.

Sharing your good fortune about a brew of yours isn't a waste of the time. It's reassuring many of us that there's hope for a less than stellar brew.

Wasting time is reading the political debate thread. Beer talk is way more fun.

 

[corkybstewart]

One way I used to avoid failure was to determine what style I actually made as opposed to what I intended to make. Too much roasted barley? Now it's a stout, not a brown ale. Not as hoppy as I hoped? It's a pale ale, not the IPA I planned.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Here's something else: what about store beers that aren't great at first, but turn out to be great after you let the bottles sit in a closet for months?

I just drank a two-year old St. Bernardus Christmas Ale, and it's a hell of a lot better than it was new. It was refrigerated all this time, I should add. I deliberately let Sierra Nevada Torpedo sit around at room temperature for months. I swear, it makes it better.