How many batches have you ruined and how??

[SwampassJ]

Might have a dumper going this weekend. Mashed in the mid 140s and it looked like I had thrown flour into it with a chalky feel on the tongue. We'll see if 2 weeks of 32 degrees did anything today or tomorrow when I pull another sample.

 

[Challenger440]

2 Batches:
first one- Right when I started brewing I wrote down the recipe for a porter to go to the LHBS to buy but left off the chocolate malt. I ended up with something like a light amber. Not a terrible beer, just not close to a porter.

second one- A brown ale that I wasn't able to bottle for 10 months (sat in primary) due to time priorities and work. Although I'm not sure the problem was the extended primary. It tastes very strongly of yeast. Not esters, but straight up yeast. It's not what i've seen autolysis flavor to be described as so I'm not completely sure what the deal is. It's been bottle aging for 3 months now and only slightly improving.

 

[n2fooz]

Three dumpers so far in a year of brewing (about 10 batches):

1) 1st attempt at a Hoegaarden clone kit from ABS. Due to the fact that the ingredients were labeled opposite of the instructions (55 min boil vs 55 min mark), I added the bitter orange and paradise grains at the beginning instead of the end of the boil. It was horrible.

2) Fat Tire clone extract kit. Sour and gushing, tasted fine before bottling. Bottling wand was the culprit

3) Yet another Fat Tire clone (AG batch) sour, slightly gushing. Not sure why but I'm about to give up on this beer. I've brewed 3 great AG batches between the extract sour gusher and this AG batch with no issues, as well as 2 after with no issues. I guess this is just my Fat Tire curse.

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

One batch since I started, brewed 50 or so batches altogether. Totally my fault, first day of fermentation was in the mid 70s, ambient, so even warmer. Learned that lesson quick, if anything now, I obsess over providing ideal conditions for the yeast.

 

[overdbus]

May be dumping today's batch , first nonsanitezed hop
bag 30 seconds till flame out ,along with forgetting to
put the chiller in ten min before flame out and have to
dunk it in star san right after flame out it was clean
this is it's second use , then coming up a gallon short
so i added a gallon of bottled water to already chilled
wort , to say I got a little distracted at the end would
be an understatement.

 

[LandoLincoln]

First and second batch ruined:

Our first all-grain day. We tried to do two all-grain batches in the same day. And this was our first time brewing beers from our own imagination - not brewing from someone else's tried-and-true recipe. And to compound problems, we decided to do two very small (1 gallon, net) batches since we knew we didn't know what we were really doing.

Since the batches were so small, we lost a LOT of temperature in 5-gallon our mash tun. Like...120-140° exiting mash temps. Ouch. We didn't do a starch conversion test. We didn't really understand the batch sparging process. The recipes we made were all wrong. Our specialty grains were way too high in percentage to where they should have been. The result was two really bad beers. But we didn't dump them. They're still sitting in my friend's basement. We're planning on cracking them open on New Year's Day and attempting to drink them. Maybe they're not ruined. We'll find out in a couple of weeks.

One batch we definitely ruined was a honey brown ale. We tried to use a SS hop filter (similar to what Bobby M made in his videos), but we tried to use it with our new keggle instead of our old tri-clad pot. The pot has built-in defenses against scorching malt - the keggle is not forgiving in that department. We believe the LME dropped right into the SS mesh filter and stayed there, ignoring our attempts at stirring the LME up. It ended up being horribly scorched, and there is a very pronounced smoky flavor to the beer now. We have a keg of it waiting to be dumped out. We will probably never get around to drinking it.

 

[Progger]

"I´ve riuned", and I am writing the sentence in quotes because it was the yeast I used in each one of those batches. It was one of these yeast some people sell in bulk after reproducing one yeast strain.

All those beers were sour and 3 of them had what I think is Brett infection. This yeast took as long as 24 hours to show any sign of activity and I think it gave a chance to bacteria and other yeasts to play a part in the fermentation.

It was a costly lesson.

 

[Bulls Beers]

One batch of Kolsch. I fermented too warm. Before I had temp controlled chest freezers, I used a cooler with water bottles. It was the middle of July. Not good. I drank some of it, but couldn't finish it.

 

[Bensiff]

Two batches, an imperial stout that my buddy did the recipe on, he refused to believe me when I said he called for too much roasted malt...tasted like an ashtray.

A pale ale that that blow off bung came detached, massive acetaldehyde.

Possible a third as a quad stalled out at 1.036 so I tossed in some funk and a bunch of blackberries. Its been sitting for a year so I should probably taste it and see if it is a go/no go.

 

[McBrewskie]

1 saison. Tried to put cucumbers in it. They broke down too much, beer tasted like dirt.

 

[naga77777]

One, a hazelnut brown ale. Put 2 bottles of artificial hazelnut extract in it.

Tried it, hated it.

Let it sit for about 6 months, still couldn't taste any beer under the blanket of blatantly artificial hazelnut taste. Dumped that fugger.

still get kinda queasy remembering that smell/taste.

 

[DrunkleJon]

Two. Both Octoberfests before I realized that they are lagers and really need temp control.

 

[daksin]

Had one go sour from being too impatient and checking way too often, had one gush from what I suspect was an old bottling bucket spigot, and then left one in primary for about 8-10 weeks that got this horrible yeast flavor that just didn't age out. That one was a bummer.

 

[adiochiro3]

3: 2 English browns and one chocolate stout. If my 3rd EB attempt goes south, I'm giving up on it.

 

[kcbeersnob]

I've had to dump two batches. Both because of scorching in the kettle, due to a grain bill with a large percentage of wheat used in conjunction with a #40 mesh hop basket. The proteins in the wort clogged the mesh, causing the wort under the basket to become somewhat stationary and burn.

Solved this problem by switching to #30 mesh and to a hop spider basket configuration instead of a basket that sits on the bottom of the kettle.

 

[guldalian]

Ruined my 1st AG batch. It was an IPA that I let ferment at 72F and it ended up being overpowering with esters and fusel alcohols.

Then more recently I ruined an amber ale bc I direct fire my mash and I forgot the burner was on and my mash hit 175 30 minutes in. Needless to say FG was not quite where it should have been.

 

[wailingguitar]

Had a carboy that had, as it turned out, a crack in it that infected a few (3?) batches very early on (late 80s). Had 1 other that got infected around '92, acetobacter for sure. That's all I can think of on the home level... commercially I had a beer that had pretty high DMS once, that was a mechanical issue; boiler was about to die and I thought I could get one more brew out of it. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Never got a strong boil and the beer suffered. It was a 100% 2row, 1.044 light ale so the DMS was pretty glaring. I got some blackberry extract and threw it in, then blended it with another beer and the result was actually pretty good.

 

[jbaysurfer]

I've dumped at least 5 batches. Mostly because of yeast handling crimes/pitch temperature on one of them.

1 batch was nasty and I dumped it and the fermenter too...I'm not sure what went wrong with that one, except to say that about the time I brewed that beer I was using 5.2 and accidentally dumped way to much in at one point and thought "hmm..we'll see what that does to the beer". So it coulda been that.

I don't use 5.2 anymore ftr...but that's not why.

 

[Jbird]

One patch of cider.

 

[ong]

A couple of early all grain pale ales that suffered from low efficiency and low mash temp, and tasted like Coors; a mild that became really tart and unpleasant from fermenting too high; and a cherry porter that I bottled too soon, resulting in bottle bombs; oh, and a quick cider that didn't get fully pasteurized, and also blew up a couple bottles. Ugh! That's a lot of dumpers.