Dumping bad beer. It feels good.

[highgravitybacon]

Just dumped about 50 bottle today of colostomy bag flavored beer. People say, don't dump beer. It's gets better.

No. Ain't no polish on these turds. Dump it.*

I don't think of it like wasting 50 bottles. In fact, keeping 50 bottles full of turds is wasting the bottles. That's 50 bottles I could otherwise fill with deliciousness. You have bad beer? Dump it. Don't let it sit. Dump it. And remember when you're dumping it that you don't like dumping it. Make it better next time.

*Bad is bad. It doesn't get good. Ho hum beer might get better or it might get worse. But bad beer needs to go.

 

[davekippen]

I needed to hear this. I am sitting on a batch of puke-inducing porter. I have all these voices in my head saying "give it time, give it time..." but its HORRIBLE. Awful. The worst. Its not a little bad. Its all the way bad. No saving it.

Its going down the drain tomorrow.

 

[davekippen]

OK, maybe I will tuck 1 away to try in a year just to know.......

 

[TahoeRy]

I agree with you - "And remember when you're dumping it that you don't like dumping it. Make it better next time". Man, it always bum's me out to dump a beer brewed with good intentions. I once brewed an IPA and by brewday went perfect. Then when I went to grab my yeast, I knocked it off the shelf and into my dogs water bowl. The airlock came off and it was just sitting on its side in the dog water. There was nothing I could do but just add it and prey - 5 second rule right - nope. Sure enough, infected, horrible finished product. You free up the carboys and bottles though and never have to endure drinking crap beer. Thats why we brew right, to avoid drinking crappy beers.

 

[davekippen]

Thats why we brew right, to avoid drinking crappy beers.

Great point! If I wanted to drink crappy beer, there are plenty I could go buy :cross:

 

[highgravitybacon]

I needed to hear this. I am sitting on a batch of puke-inducing porter. I have all these voices in my head saying "give it time, give it time..." but its HORRIBLE. Awful. The worst. Its not a little bad. Its all the way bad. No saving it.

Its going down the drain tomorrow.

Let me talk about bad beers like past relationships:
Failed beer - "hoppy wheat." Crappy, harsh when I tasted it in the fermeter. Dry hopped it which made it crappier, grassier, and harsher. Bottled it. Crappy for first month. Progressively crappier over next 4 months. DUMP IT.

Failed beer - Berliner weisse. Odd tasting. Not really sour. Got more and more odd tasting over next month. "Give it time" voice speaks to me. Comments in forums say, "it takes time." Month two, funky. Month three, flavors of burnt couches, oil wells burning, dryer vent smoldering, rubber hoses melting. DUMP IT NOW.

Failed beer - English IPA. Forgot to put in the C90. Nothing to balance the hops. Brutally bitter. Used S-04 too warm. Tasted like someone puked a fruit salad into a jelly jar and topped it with aspirin. Eventually fruity esterbombs subsided into nothing but godawful bitterness. DUMP IT.

Hefeweizen try number 300 - Tried to "be creative" with recipe that is simple, needs no creativity, and tolerates no creativity. Tried to learn from previous 299 failed mistakes. Ah, this one is nice I say. Smells like banana cream pie. Tastes like heaven. That's week one in the bottle. Week two, meh, kind of a sulfury thing. It'll pass. Week three, smells someone pumped one of those big vacuum sewer trucks into my nose. It'll pass, I say. "don't rush the beer" voice in my head. Week four. Undrinkable. So much sulfur it's probably a Strike Anywhere Beer.

In every single case I mentioned, it was apparent from very early on that this batch was going pear shaped. Yet I continued to persist in the vain hope that my sense wasn't correct. Had I just dumped it and moved on, I wouldn't have wasted the time, the bottles, the dry hop, the whatever. DUMP IT.

Here's another story:
Making a tripel. Harvest a yeast from a bottle of Avery Nineteen. It's like WLP550 I think. Starter tastes and smells like heaven. Brewday is perfect. A little short on volume from trub loss and bad planning, but OG is only +.002 of target. Fermentation goes well. Smells incredible. Find myself huffing the carboy fumes. Takes a while to clear, but eventually does with a bit of gelatin. FG is right where I want it. On bottling day, it tastes like pure sexual chocolate in the bucket. I tried one last night after three weeks in the bottling: om nom nom says me. 9.2%, decently hoppy, smooth as silk, smells like perfume and fresh outdoor air with belgian angels floating in it, and a pleasing boozy warmth that feels like a purring cat on my lap.

If the process is sound, the beer will be sound. You know if its going to work from day one. Good beer isn't an accident. It's not a surprise.

 

[davekippen]

This is kind of like therapy. Hi, Im Dave. I made a bad beer.

 

[Avocet]

Month three, flavors of burnt couches, oil wells burning, dryer vent smoldering, rubber hoses melting. DUMP IT NOW.

Now that is something I can comprehend.

Wow, reminds of of those 44 bottles of "Acrid smell of burnt 18 wheeler clutches and brakes on the decent from the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 Red Ale" I had setting in a closet 3-4 months once. No-in spite of what others told me--it never got better. Fired the whole mess-along with the Modelo Negro boxes it was nicely packed in-right into the alley dumpster. Maybe the bums got it-I couldn't go back and look--hey I'm sure Napoleon never vacationed back at Waterloo either.......

 

[highgravitybacon]

Wow, reminds of of those 44 bottles of "Acrid smell of burnt 18 wheeler clutches and brakes on the decent from the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 Red Ale" I had setting in a closet 3-4 months once. No-in spite of what others told me--it never got better. Fired the whole mess-along with the Modelo Negro boxes it was nicely packed in-right into the alley dumpster. Maybe the bums got it-I couldn't go back and look--hey I'm sure Napoleon never vacationed back at Waterloo either.......

This reads like an unedited, raw, version of beer writer Michael Jackson's travel journal. The unpublished "Around the Detroit and the Inland Empire in 80 malt liquors."

 

[Avocet]

Actually HGV that swill spawned my decision to never again use a liquid malt or make kit beer again-to build a mash tun and become more serious about this stuff. It really was just burned malt -I mean I could smell it right off-but I fermented/bottled/aged/aged/aged/prayed/aged/cursed/pitched it anyway.

Two lessons learned-you can't put the genie back in the bottle and speaking of bottles when you keg it you get to enjoy it far more quickly and you can dump it out a hell of a lot faster.

 

[TahoeRy]

Thanks for posting those highgravitybacon! Got a few laughs and brought back many memories of "being creative" without knowing what I was really doing. It took me so long to learn to just dump it. I used to try to age the sewer taste out of a bad beer hoping it would have a miracle recovery, but for some reason it never happened - except once. I made an amber ale and added a bunch of pine needles to it during the boil (I know, right). Surprisingly, it was so bad. I didn't dump it and tried it about 4 months later and it was good, err drinkable.

Like davekippen said, therapy - not alone. Hello my name is Ryan and I have had to dump horrible beer.

 

[whitehause]

I did an " everything I have a little left of " brew A couple months ago....knew going in it was a longshot to be any good. Wasn't horrible in the beginning, but got worse as time went on. Even put "Great beer, drink first" on the tap handle. First and only dump so far.

 

[dalano73]

I just dumped a half keg of a pumpkin ale, after a few months it wasn't getting any better and I needed the keg, so bye bye...

 

[forstmeister]

I had to dump a batch of Denny's rye smile 2 summers ago. I was fairly new to brewing and doing it in my garage on propane. Everything seemed fine until I cracked that first bottle. It tastes like a rubber hose. A garden hose to be more precise. See, I bought and used a new garden hose to provide water from the house. Lesson learned...but it cost me about $50

 

[b-boy]

I don't know. I had a bad IPA that I couldn't drink. It had a weird bite, and I got a strange tickle in the back of my throat when I drank it. not good. Had a poker party and one of the guys loved it. He couldn't stop raving about it. I was so happy to get rid of it I sent him home with some growlers. I would have given him the keg if I could.

So you see, bad beer is in the eye of the 'beer holder'. Wow that's bad.

 

[jakenbacon]

You all just wait 'till Revvy see's this thread..... JK, I am on bored, dumping 4 month old terribleness tomorrow....

 

[Patro]

I had a porter I thought tasted like a1 steak sauce, but a friend loved it. Gave a lot of it to him but I still ended up dumping half the batch. Not sure what went wrong with it, and how I got a1 and he didn't.

 

[andvari7]

My first batch was absolutely awful. It was everything wrong with beer, save for the color. The carbonation was more at home at Yellowstone, the taste resembled sour failure, and it had...thingies...in it. I drank three bottles, because I had to swallow my mistake. The rest went bye-bye.

Third batch - no carbonation, and it was, more or less, the same rubbish. It took less time for me to dispose of it.

Sixth batch - smelled like batch one, and tasted like it, plus the overpowering bite of plastic. Two sips. It took me two sips to rid myself of that batch.

I'm three for six. I brew batch seven this weekend. SMaSH, with Maris Otter and Citra. I'm not dumping this one. Except for the sediment at the bottom of the empty bottles. That stuff, combined with three cups of black coffee in the morning, will deprive me of twenty-five pounds, without any changes to my diet or exercise.

 

[sdillow]

Dumped my first batch last month. Guilt-ridden at first, but it felt liberating after the second bottle went down the drain. To add insult to injury, it was brewed with my first harvest of home-grown hops. It took another four or five batches to get the courage to try the hops again. Thankfully that batch came out awesome.

Ended up tossing a few Holiday spiced ales while I was at it that were too spicy. The big issue as I see it is learning what caused the bad flavor in the first place. And that is where I am too inexperienced yet.

 

[thielus_protar]

Brewed a batch of Papazian's Goat Scrotum after tasting a friend's batch.His was delicious. I decided to use the "spruce essence" option. I made the decision that the recipe was wrong and the 1 teaspoon of spruce was obviously not nearly enough. I mean, come on! 1 tsp in 5 gallons!!!! Clearly a miss print.

There was about a 1 week window about 2 years later where I could ALMOST pound down a bottle. It went from tasting like someone crapped a chocolate covered pinecone to someone crapped a chocolate covered oxidized pinecone.

Ever since then I have wanted to cut down the large, aromatic Blue Spruce growing in my front yard. It mocks me to this day.

:fro:

 

[yewtah-brewha]

to effin funny! lol I too have a porter that smells like a$$ and tastes like cooked turd's marinated in basterd juice, sprinkled with dog scab's.
I think theyre so bad the bottles might be ruined! lol, but serious

 

[QuercusMax]

I poured out 3-4 cases of beer whose labels fell off 4 years ago. I had a sour infected batch that never carbonated, mixed in with a bunch of good beers, and couldn't tell which was which. It actually put me off brewing for 3 years. Well, that plus having 2 more kids. My youngest is nearly 3 now, and it felt good to dispose of those bad ones. I've refilled them all with new awesome beer now.

 

[Dirty25]

I have no problem dumping a beer that dosent meet my standards. THis is just a hobby and I do it to craft good beer. If it is sub par and no good it goes bye bye. Of course if I think it needs more time to age I will, bit if it generally sucks cause of bad fermentation or something it goes.

 

[uxo]

to effin funny! lol I too have a porter that smells like a$$ and tastes like cooked turd's marinated in basterd juice, sprinkled with dog scab's.
I think theyre so bad the bottles might be ruined! lol, but serious

Lmfao. "The bottles might be ruined!"

 

[Braufessor]

I just dumped a half keg of a pumpkin ale, after a few months it wasn't getting any better and I needed the keg, so bye bye...

Ok - that's it. I have a 2 year old pumkin ale that sucks. Tomorrow it gets dumped. Haven't need the bottles, so I just left it. But, it is time - beer dumping commences tomorrow at noon.

 

[Zamial]

I dumped 30 gallons of bad beer a few years ago. It was infected and not in a good way. Lesson learned and a dead spot in the lawn dubbed "the dandelion patch".

I also have a few brews of that particular beauty that I was able to sort of save/slow down the infection. Should have drank it faster, now one tastes like pickles and the other... IDK but they need to go. Good thing there is only about a gallon of each. I will be turning the IDK into BBQ sauce and I am tempted to try to make some pickles with the one that tastes like pickles...

I have also had a bad beer turn good after a year but wormwood was involved. Sadly I like that one now and most of it got dumped before it was ready...