Bad beer: Give it away, or dump it?

[brick_haus]

Haha. Reminds me of the only time I brewed a beer that even I wouldn't drink ( I like to make myself suffer through the bad ones to teach myself a lesson!). A friend of mine who is always bugging me to give him some beer ( he always seems to have an empty corny handy) took it, even after my warning!!! Next time I saw him he proceeded to chew me out for giving it to him. All is well now and he's back to begging for homebrew again.

 

[AlCophile]

Freeze it, pour off the liquid from the ice(water), let crud settle, now try it.

 

[kettlehead]

I hate liver my wife loves it! Point being everyone has different taste.

 

[kmckiou]

I've brewed a lot of good beer and a little not very good beer. I've never had a beer that was so bad it was undrinkable. Personally, if it's just a little bit of off flavors (not that it tastes like you're chewing on a band-aid) I'd keep it. Sometimes off flavors will age out. If not, it will make a good third beer. Drink a great beer first, a good beer second and by the third beer this one will taste fine. But that's me, I hate being wasteful.

I agree. Evidently even my worst batch became reasonable. I drink all my mistakes. Age it and figure out how to save it.

 

[TrickyDick]

+1 for sour it, if it's really just underattenuated and doesn't have anything else wrong with it.

Although, if that's the case, and it's not too reliant on fresh hoppy flavor, you could also just warm it back up, get another packet of yeast started in a couple liters of starter wort, and dump it in at high krausen to finish the job...

I agree, that as long as it's not a overly bitter or hoppy beer, you can probably make a nice sour out of this. Try a pack of roeselare, even an aged one past its prime from the discount section of your LHBS....

TD

 

[ghohn]

Like a few people mentioned previously, if you've got space, sour it.

Otherwise, if you preface the heck out of the fact it's a mistake to friends, I see no harm in serving it to them. Free is free and we are all adult enough to make the call on what we put in our mouths.

 

[oli-aus]

I recently had this problem with a Belgium beer out of a kit, it was fine but just not interesting enough to drink the whole of the 60 bottles I made.

So I am experimenting with making an eisen-quad.

I have freeze distilled the remaining 15 bottles and am going to add some steeped specialty grains to it then bottle again in about a month.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1423894815.701612.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1423894830.569744.jpg

P.S. I have no idea how this will turn out but I recon it's worth the gamble if your ready to chuck the batch.

 

[Chadwick]

I'm surprised at how quickly many people are recommending altering, dumping, distilling, or any other number of things to this beer. What happened to aging the beer so it can mature?

If it was mine I would bottle it and forget it for about 6 months. Someone possibly already posted this link, and if so, sorry. But here it is. A good read.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

 

[Mike_kever_kombi]

In my formative brewing years, I was trying to clone Boston Lager. On one of my batches, I was close, but it left a weird aftertaste. Sort of like yuengling.

I hated it. I was gonna use it for cooking beer, and a buddy wanted to try it. I laid down all the usual disclaimers.

He loved it. I still brew it for him to this day. I still hate it.