"Cooking the Fridge" style brewing?

[Jasper18]

I'm sure everyone has heard of cooking the fridge. You just open the door, see what you have, and throw it together. Does anyone do this with brewing? You know: "Well i've got some DME, a bit of LME, and two or three hops varieties laying around getting old. Can I throw it all together and brew it up?" I know you would have to get ratios somewhat right and while you might end up with a bastard-child beer, could it make something nice?

 

[oceanic_brew]

I'm on my second batch of a beer that began as a "kitchen sink" brew.

8.25 lbs Marris otter
4 lbs of beechsmoked malt
1 lbs Melanoidin
1 lbs honey malt
.44 lbs flaked wheat
.59 flaked oats
.19flaked barely

Wyeast 1968

Made 7 1/2 gallons of deliciousness which I'm entering into a comp here.

 

[jekeane]

I do this often with leftover hops. I do still run it through a recipe calculator though.

 

[khannon]

These I call my "on hand ale" series... Sometimes they are better than others... Haven't hit a truly bad one yet, and they are my cheapest brew days by far... I'll often plan ahead a little and harvest the yeast from a bottle and make a starter...

 

[JonM]

Kitchen sink beer, stewbrew, etc.

 

[MaryB]

Friend did that and he regrets not writing down what went into it. One of the best ales I have tasted!

 

[FatDragon]

I've planned half a dozen kitchen sink brews but never had the courage to go through with any of them. Part of the problem is that I'll use an ingredient twice and expect to bring it into regular rotation, so I buy a kilo or two from the online brewshops and figure I'll have it on hand long-term that way, then use a grand total of 100g in the next year. The result is that a kitchen sink brew with two kilograms of weird caramel and roasted malts for 20 liters of beer would just leave me in the position to do another similar kitchen sink brew (or two) before I really cleaned out my rarely-used grains.

The closest I came was a barleywine that I considered hitting with a bunch of carabohemian, Special W, rye, and a few various lighter caramalts. In addition to the same problem of only cleaning out half of the overstock, beersmith had the SRM in the low 30's and I was afraid the final product was going to be a muddled mess. I ended up going the opposite route - 98% 2-row and a handful of oats for a little extra mouthfeel with a five hour boil and some maillardizing wort reduction in a pot on the side. I'll tell you whether or not it was the right decision in another seven months or so...

 

[blackbeer]

i do it every year. i only brew Jan-Apr so whatever is left goes in the last batch with a bit of pre-planning of course. i did a barley wine last spring and a RIS a couple weeks ago. i do a small beer from the second runnings too.

 

[badmajon]

I usually do this, to be honest, I am too inexperienced of a brewer to really get anything amazing out of it. Home brewing is very forgiving, you usually end up with something tasty, but I would be better off following recipes as I seem to spend all my energy on rigging up/screwing with equipment than on recipes.