Brewing 'leftover beer'

[sempf]

After a recent binge of brewing, I have a fine selection of leftover hops, extract and steeping grains in my collection. I have been going with Revvy
s comment once that the base extract and yeast matter less than the steeping grains and hop selection, and so most of my recipes have been based on those.

Anyway, I am planning on 'leftover brew' just to see what I get. I've seen other posts where people try to make real recipes out of leftovers but I just want to see what I end up with.

What's the strangest leftover brew you have ever ended up with?

 

[android]

i've only done one, but it was a wheaty dark brown ale high in alcohol that was just OK.

 

[jessup]

you might surprise yourself and end up with something delicous. i disagree with your comment about yeast mattering less. while i agree the extract base doesn't really matter much, i believe yeast is the largest variable you can change next to grains and hops.

recently did a "leftover" batch where i had a buncha grains and hops hanging around and it turned out really good. the american ale II yeast probably made the biggest difference in the experiment, though. it was something like:

1 lb vienna
1 lb pilsner
.5 lb special b
.3 lb aromatic
3 lb lite DME
1 lb sugar
.5 oz chinook - 60min
.75 oz fuggle - 60min
.5 oz cascade - 10min
1 oz fuggle - 0min
1 oz chinook - 0min
Wyeast american ale II

 

[Bernie Brewer]

Not real strange, but here is my Potluck Ale..

http://https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/my-first-throw-together-whatever-you-have-batch-21400/

 

[TheMan]

I kind of use these types of brews as IPA's...I make them pretty bitter so that any odd flavors don't bother me much since it's so bitter lol. Plus I like very bitter so they usually turn out alright.

 

[Grimm]

I will probably be doing up one of these this weekend. got some grains and an extra bag of Wheat DME and plenty of hops.

 

[neomantra]

i wouldn't say they've turned out strangely but i've definitely had multiple occasions where i just brew with what's sitting around. i bought a pound of czech saaz and a pound of mt rainier hops from hopsdirect earlier this year and i generally have light dme laying around.

since then on more than one occasion have gotten the itch to brew at times when going to the lbhs wasn't an option. it's resulted in 3-4 variations of beers all based on light DME + those hops + whatever other random stuff i could find (light brown sugar from the super market, different yeasts from my yeast bank, etc). i've yet to brew one that tastes anything close to the others despite using mostly the same ingredients for them.

swapping the hops addition orders alone created 2 different styles of beer, changing the amount of DME made for an imperial styled heavier beer on one batch versus a summer-ish style lighter beer in another. i also did one split batch using wlp cali yeast in one and wlp belgian yeast in another which obviously tasted nothing alike, but both turned out pretty nice. i think it's a lot of fun to see how these small changes can drastically alter the beer style from batch to batch.

 

[Captain Damage]

I've got a leftovers brew in primary right now. Some English Crystal, Biscuit and special B (steeped); I bought some DME for base the base, yeast and an ounce of Glacier which I haven't brewed with before. Hey, one way or another it'll be beer!