The Official Disappointment Thread

[guldalian]

Recently brewed a cream ale. Nothing special, just run of the mill. It's been in the bottle 4 weeks now and most of the bottles aren't carbing. A few are ridiculously carbonated, and I feel more like I'm drinking a saison or something. The really crappy part is that the carbed ones taste awful and the flat ones are delicious. Go figure. Also I only brew once every 2-3 months, so any mess up is "kind of a big deal", to further quote Ron burgundy.

 

[Brewskii]

Ok... Brewed up a CDA, BYO's Widmere Pitch Black. It fermented out in a little less than 2 weeks using a 1.5 L starter of 029 that was getting a little too close to the expiration date for me.
Despite being hopped to a theoretical 54 IBU, the sample from the transfer to secondary for dry hops was bitter as earwax !
I can't catch a break
WTF!

 

[bovineblitz]

I submitted a beer to the Sam Adams homebrew competition in the 'other' cateogory and described it as a very loose american twist on a pale ale/witte hybrid... they scored it poorly because it didn't fit the witte profile well enough. What the ****??? The BJCP certified judge even commented that he could taste the coriander... there is no coriander at all in that beer. And they complained that the yeast profile was too clean... that was kind of the point. It's not a witte.

I was pretty pissed off. No more competitions for me, what a waste.

Note to anyone entering a beer into category 23 - don't try and describe your beer, it can only hurt you.

 

[60sd]

Before I posted this, I checked my "Brew Notes" note book:

I made exactly 2 extract beers before jumping to all grain.

I had grown up watching my best friend's dad brew beer. 20+ years later my younger brother started brewing and I helped him with several batches. My first AG was really good, a bit hazy, but delicious.

I upped the ante a little more with my second AG brew and made a custom/personal recipe brown ale for a fund raiser golf tournament for work (I must have been drunk when I thought that would be a good idea) I thought it was just OK, but the guys at work loved it.

Then I made an AG Red Ale. I was so confident from all my previous (4) brews that it would be good, I gave some away as a gift. When I took my first taste of the finished product, I could barely finish the glass. "It's OK" I thought, "It just needs some more time to age". 6 weeks later and it still tasted like s**t.

Then I made a black IPA. My brother made the same recipe and we had a joint brew day. His came out great. I dumped 5 gallons down the drain. It was a sad day for me.

I now have a few wins under my belt with a second batch of the brown ale (at the request of the guys at work) and a killer double IPA.

Glad I found this thread. Maybe I can fully exorcise the ruined beer demons and get back to brewing some solid beers.

It really, really sucked to pull the top off a carbonated, chilled keg and pour it down the drain. I still haven't popped the tops on the bottles of red ale and poured them out, I may let the kids do it for fun, it's just too painful for me.

 

[AmandaK]

I was pretty pissed off. No more competitions for me, what a waste.

That's like saying you drank coffee at a Starbucks, hated the service and have since sworn off coffee for good. If you don't like the feedback you received, email the judges. If the comp was worth their salt, they would require judges to put contact information on the score sheets. If there is no information, then that comp wasn't run very well and I wouldn't enter that specific comp again.

Try entering well respected comps, like the Drunk Monk, the IN State Fair Brewer's Cup, the Kansas City Bier Meister's Homebrew Comp, the Dixie Cup, the Land of the Muddy Waters... I could go on but I will just name a few.

Note to anyone entering a beer into category 23 - don't try and describe your beer, it can only hurt you.

I do hope that no one takes this advice. Describing a beer well is the only thing that judges can go off of in several categories, Cat 23 being the prime example. You should describe a beer so that a total stranger can have an idea as to what they are putting in their mouth before they actually do.

Saying it is a "very loose american twist on a pale ale/witte hybrid" gives me no idea what you are going for. Is it hoppy? Orange? Coriander? What parts of the wit are in this pale ale? Or is it an over hopped wit? Had you said that it was a pale ale made with wheat or wit yeast or orange peel, they would have a better idea of the intention of the beer.

 

[Darwin18]

I submitted a beer to the Sam Adams homebrew competition in the 'other' cateogory and described it as a very loose american twist on a pale ale/witte hybrid... they scored it poorly because it didn't fit the witte profile well enough. What the ****??? The BJCP certified judge even commented that he could taste the coriander... there is no coriander at all in that beer. And they complained that the yeast profile was too clean... that was kind of the point. It's not a witte.

I was pretty pissed off. No more competitions for me, what a waste.

Note to anyone entering a beer into category 23 - don't try and describe your beer, it can only hurt you.

Agree with everything AmandaK said above. Don't give up on competitions because you didn't get the feedback you wanted. Try to enter competitions that are more established and well known as the quality of judging seems to improve with these competitions.

As for a wit/APA hybrid...It seems like a very odd pairing in my opinion, but like AmandaK said your description could have been better for the judges. Were you going for a APA that utilizes coriander and orange zest? Or a hoppy "clean" wit brewed with American hops?

 

[zeg]

Had you said that it was a pale ale made with wheat or wit yeast or orange peel, they would have a better idea of the intention of the beer.

To add some emphasis that I think you probably intended (sorry if not!), try to remember that for a beginner, the purpose of entering a competition is to get feedback and ultimately improve as a brewer. There's more to being a brewer than simply producing good beer. Right here is one example of this: clearly and accurately describing the style of beer.

Before writing off the judge's advice, take a moment to cool off, and then try to think objectively about whether their comments were as unhelpful or incorrect as you initially felt. Could you have done something to change that? They probably weren't trying to screw you over, most judges, even if they're amateur, are doing an honest job trying to be as fair and helpful as they can.

It's hard to take criticism, especially when it is surprising. As I mentioned above, I had a beer get a terrible score earlier this year in my first competition. As I read the first judge's sheet, my eyes were popping out of my head: what was this guy thinking? That was an excellent beer! After cooling off, I realized that the sample he had must have gone bad. At that point I started to get angry with the brewery who had cellared the entries, thinking they must not have done a good job. Those jerks! Then I remembered I had a bottle left and tested it. It was foul. So nobody had let me down, I clearly need to be more careful to avoid oxidation or infection next time around.

 

[bovineblitz]

That's like saying you drank coffee at a Starbucks, hated the service and have since sworn off coffee for good. If you don't like the feedback you received, email the judges. If the comp was worth their salt, they would require judges to put contact information on the score sheets. If there is no information, then that comp wasn't run very well and I wouldn't enter that specific comp again.

Try entering well respected comps, like the Drunk Monk, the IN State Fair Brewer's Cup, the Kansas City Bier Meister's Homebrew Comp, the Dixie Cup, the Land of the Muddy Waters... I could go on but I will just name a few.

I do hope that no one takes this advice. Describing a beer well is the only thing that judges can go off of in several categories, Cat 23 being the prime example. You should describe a beer so that a total stranger can have an idea as to what they are putting in their mouth before they actually do.

Saying it is a "very loose american twist on a pale ale/witte hybrid" gives me no idea what you are going for. Is it hoppy? Orange? Coriander? What parts of the wit are in this pale ale? Or is it an over hopped wit? Had you said that it was a pale ale made with wheat or wit yeast or orange peel, they would have a better idea of the intention of the beer.

Multiple things. First, the competition was in early July and I didn't get my scoresheet until just before September started. It's doubtful emailing anyone would matter.

Second, for cat 23 you have one line to name your beer and a few words to describe your beer, maybe other competitions are different but seeing as how it's an 'other' category it's not really sufficient description space. I wrote out 5 or 6 things but none of it was really enough, so went with what I did. I did say that it's brewed with wheat and a ton of varied citrus zest.

I don't mind if they simply thought it wasn't that good. Both judges said they liked it and it was brewed nice and clean, no diacetyl no off-flavors. Other things were that it's not sweet enough to be a wit, too hoppy for a wit, lack of clarity (which I didn't understand being a criticism?) things like that... at first I thought maybe the sweetness was an actual criticism but no, it's just cuz wittes have that little hint of it and this beer is dry. So because it doesn't fit a style at all but giving the judges some sort of frame of reference is required, they took that frame of reference and applied strict guidelines. I should have said something more bizarre apparently, but when drinking it you can certainly see how it does resemble both a witte and a pale ale.

To add some emphasis that I think you probably intended (sorry if not!), try to remember that for a beginner, the purpose of entering a competition is to get feedback and ultimately improve as a brewer. There's more to being a brewer than simply producing good beer. Right here is one example of this: clearly and accurately describing the style of beer.

Not really a beginner. I didn't expect to win but I wanted to see how it did and get some feedback, as always. I've brewed this beer three times. ALL of the judging was based on it being a wit. Four bottles, shipping costs, entry costs, time and effort all gone to waste. I'm not annoyed because I don't think I brewed a mediocre beer but they did, that's not what the scoresheet said.

The idea behind calling it a witte/pale hybrid is it uses a huge pile of fresh zest from multiple different fruits, has lots of citra/sorachi, and 25% wheat, fermented clean and dry. Mainly the witte comparison is due to the wheat and zest, and the pale ale is the bitterness level and tropical hops. So it's neither, but reminiscent of both. Hence the 'loose interpretation'.

I can see how if someone just looks over the entry form while drinking 500 beers in a day they'd see the word 'witte' and attach to it, but still, it makes it feel like a waste to enter anything not brewed strictly to a style, because apparently 'loose interpretation of a hybrid between a APA and a witte' means "should be brewed exactly to specifications of a witte in category 16". The fact that the certified judge 'tasted the coriander' really pissed me off, apparently he didn't read my one line description at all. If there was coriander in it, I was required to write that down... so what do you expect my conclusion to be?

It didn't get a terrible score, a 27 isn't awful. But again, I got nothing out of it at all, so I'm not too keen on doing it again. Competitions require you to give up beer, ship beer, and pay for your entries... so, unless it's super convenient, no more for me.

 

[zeg]

If you don't value the feedback you received, then I understand your frustration.

However, it still sounds to me like you're taking this more negatively than you should. Looking at the BJCP guidelines for category 23, I find "If a base style is declared, the style should be recognizable. The beer should be judged by how well the special ingredient or process complements, enhances, and harmonizes with the underlying style." To me, that means that it doesn't have to exactly match a witte or an APA, but it should reflect the style to an appropriate degree. I'm speculating here, because it's hard to say whether I think the judges were reasonable without seeing the exact comments. It's possible they were totally off base, but it could also simply be that it wasn't witte enough to warrant the description. Maybe that's what you were going for, but maybe you'd have done better to describe it in a different way. That's really my point---and it may or may not apply.

I'm not saying you're wrong to decide that competitions aren't worth it for you. I'm also not terribly surprised to hear that the feedback for an experimental brew might not be what you were looking for---I'm really not sure how anyone can objectively judge a beer in that category, and even deciding what sort of advice might be helpful could be a big challenge.

 

[bovineblitz]

Perhaps I would have been better off describing it differently, as you said. I thought they'd be able to read those two things and look for elements of both, like how you said it doesn't have to exactly match but should reflect the style to an appropriate degree. Perhaps it's simply due to the volume of beers, they're rushing through. Perhaps my description didn't make sense to them. If they were clever they'd see the play on the American Wheat style, but I suppose such things are lost when there's a volume that large to deal with. Whatever the case, it's disappointing.

Let's see...

wheat - witte
zest - witte (doing anything in excess = American as well)
clean yeast - APA
hoppy - APA
cloudy - witte (maybe confusing because cloudy but no esters?)
citrusy - both, orange and tropical flavors
OG/ABV - APA

Things written on the bottle - Pale Ale/Witte Hybrid, loosely "American Witte" - brewed with wheat, 2-row, excessive amount of citrus zest, citra, sorachi ace, ABV, chico strain

Looking at that, I don't expect it to fit a witte style all that strictly. Maybe I'm biased because it's my vision, but taking a step back from it, I don't see how they got that expectation unless they were rushing. Maybe they don't know what it means to put something in quotation marks, perhaps the written English language isn't their strong point.

I'm not really all that pissed about it anymore, I was when I opened the letter and read how it was judged. The score isn't what pissed me off, it was how they arrived at that score. Now it's just disappointing, hence it belongs in the disappointing thread.

 

[zeg]

I'm not really all that pissed about it anymore, I was when I opened the letter and read how it was judged. The score isn't what pissed me off, it was how they arrived at that score. Now it's just disappointing, hence it belongs in the disappointing thread.

Got it. That's quite reasonable. I've certainly been through similar frustrations with people who "just don't get it." I've found in more than a few cases, though, that it was actually me who was missing something. I haven't been through enough competitions for this to have happened in the brewing context, but I'm sure I'd have a similar reaction to yours.

 

[duckredbeard]

My disappointments usually come in the form of SWMBO changing the schedule. She encourages me to brew and likes what I make. BUT...If I plan a brew day 3 weeks in advance she says do it. As we get closer, she plans dinners with friends, play dates for the kids, in-laws coming, other kids birthday parties, home projects, pedicures for her man bashing friends, she has to work...

I work third shift and watch kids for 7 hours after I get off work. She works part time from home and has them for about 5 hours (while they are keeping me from sleeping). I want my brew day. At least let me clean something and pretend.

Ok...I'm done.

 

[CBXBob]

I am very disappointed in this thread, I read every post, the one and only redeeming post was AmandaK's fecal beer post. As I was reading it my ever active imagination was thinking of labels for that beer. Thanks AmandaK, priceless.