Revvy, I'm going to respectfully disagree with you. Some beer faults can't be cured with time.
My key point in saying you can chuck it is understanding WHY it has a fault and correcting it before you chuck. It took me a couple of batches to work out my carbonation problems, I was underfilling bottles and no amount of time was going to correct that.
I feel that sometimes the 'let it age' approach is overemphasized here, rather than troubleshooting. I agree that it's rash to throw something out if you don't like it at first taste (especially if you are tasting in the fermenter, that's just silly).
Well, it's really hard to diagnose a GREEN beer, because young beer tasting the way that it often does,
IS PERFECTLY NORMAL
And if you ever helped a new brewer on here it won't take you too long to realize that Most new brewers try to judge a beer while it is still in the fermenter, and either dump the beer or start a panic thread. OR they taste the beer under three weeks in the bottle, dump the beer OR start a panic thread.
Because green beers OFTEN HAVE OFF FLAVORS,
but the difference between green beer and a beer with problems to be troubleshooted, is that the green beers improve with time.
Or they misdiagnose a beer, because honestly it is often difficult for someone without experience to diagnose a beer from something they read...ESPECIALLY if they are tasting green beer.
And if you follow up the new brewer's threads OFTEN they come back down the line and say, "Oh my god, I am so glad I listened to you and didn't dump my beer, I realize now that it WAS just green, it taste great now. "
You don't have too far to look, just search for "is my beer ruined" or "Off Flavor" and you will see.
That's why the first question those of us who help ask is, "How old is this beer."
It's great to trouble shoot your beer, or get help,
but you first have to figure out if there was a problem to begin with. And that can only happen if first you give the beer a bit more time....
And you can't do that if you dump your beer.
So I'm sorry you disagree with those of us who advocate waiting, but your advice to just arbitrarily dump a beer, is simply bad, we have
hundreds of threads, and stories that prove you wrong.