Friends don't let friends brew bad beer. Share your bad recipes!

[dbsmith]

I thought this would be a fun thread for sharing our not-so-great experiments. Post your experiment gone wrong. Maybe this can serve as a guide to people trying strange ingredients or hop combinations. Brewers are typically experimenters, and there's no shame in a fail! I'll start with my Belgianish Lavender blonde...yuck.

5.50 gallons
OG: 1.046
FG: 1.013
Single-Infusion 154 degrees F for 55 min
Thin decoction to raise to 165 mash-out

8 lbs Pilsner
.5 lbs Munich
.5 lbs Wheat Malt

2 oz Crystal Hops (60 min)
1 oz Crystal Hops (5 min)
.38 oz Lavender (Flameout)

S-33 yeast

Came out tasting very....planty. Just not quite bad enough to dump...but pretty darn close. It's hard to describe. Definitely not what I had in mind. What a waste of Pilsner .

 

[dbsmith]

Don't tell me I'm the only one here who has made a bad batch of beer...

 

[HopZombie99]

I think you starting going wrong when you decided on making a lavender Pilsner. It went downhill from there!

 

[Beernik]

There are two kids of lavender. One is more culinary and the other is more medicinal. The culinary one is more aeromatic. The medicinal one reminds me of menthol and camphor.

I recently went back and looked at an extract Irish Red Ale I made 6 years ago and thought "What the hell was I thinking?"

The beer wasn't necessarily bad. But it was too dark, too bitter, and used the wrong hops for an IRA. In terms of BJCP stats, it was much closer to an ESB or APA.

I don't know that I care to dig out the recipe again, except to say, "An IRA does not have 47 IBUs from Cascade."

 

[christopherrburns]

I think the recipe was lost (mercifully) but i made a chocolate orange stout and used orange soda extract. It tasted like orange mop and glo mixed with some soy sauce.

 

[TyTanium]

Brown malt + Belgian yeast. Bad bad bad bad bad bad.

"Dorchester Abbey" Dubbel Brown

4 lbs 2 row
4 lbs Munich
0.5 lbs Vienna
0.5 lbs Brown Malt
0.5 lbs Special B
0.5 lbs Biscuit
0.125 lbs Crystal Rye
1.5 lbs invert sugar

1 oz EKG @ 60 mins
0.5 oz EKG @ 15 mins

WLP 575


The final beer was one of the more technically sound beers I've ever made. And nearly undrinkable. Just a terrible recipe.

 

[roastquake]

One gallon wormwood experiment, a brown ale with a 1/2 tsp wormwood boiled for 45 minutes. the bitterness was ungodly, it was the only batch I ever dumped without bottling, at least it was just a gallon. funny thing is that is smelled amazing the whole time it was fermenting, but man when I took that swig.. I cant even describe how terrible it was, I may have suppressed the memory of the flavor.

 

[madhatt3r]

Cherry wheat using maraschino cherries.

Forgot to not add the juice with it. Turned into 5 gallons of the driest, gnarliest cooking sherries I've ever had the displeasure to taste.
Only batch I've ever dumped.

 

[SteveHeff]

Orange coriander. Maris Otter base malt. I added in the juice of 2 oranges and 1/2 orange zest. It was so orangy, with the undertone of Maris, that I had to give all of it away. Everybody who drank it said it was good (although I don't believe them).

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

My effed-up attempt at an English ESB - light DME extract with about 20% crystal, late fuggles hops, and wicked overcarbonated. Sickenly sweet, earthy, with a bad carbonic acid tang, fizzy but no head. It was drinkable, but after forcing down 2 sixers-worth over two weeks I couldn't face another one and dumped the rest. It was like a ginger ale, except the ginger was replaced by Fuggles aroma and maltose.

 

[aiptasia]

Anything with simcoe is a direct drain pour for me. No sir, don't like it.