What's your "burn" rate?

[Spartan1979]

I've been brewing over 30 years and can only remember dumping 3 batches.

The first was when I went to add Polyclar and grabbed the wrong container and added a cleaner. I realized right away what I had done and no one drank any.

The second was a club barrel project. It soured in the barrel. It was interesting, but not really that good.

The third was a batch a neighbor asked me to brew and then, for medical reasons, she couldn't drink it. It was fine, but not what I like. So, after a while I got tired of having it my kegerator so I dumped it.

 

[Miraculix]

How often do you brew and how many of those batches don't get kept? Do the less than stellar ones get served to your friends? I can see that as a less wasteful option provided they're not horrible. I gave brewed batches that are so good I don't want to share.

My personal approach is to give away as much as possible to free me of product that inhibits further production.

I really enjoy brewing and tweaking and I am also in the proces of succesfully getting shreaded and staying shreaded. So there is the deal for me... I have limited caloric capacity for Alcohol plus it really reduces my sleep quality which directly reduces live quality and slows down training progress. But I enjoy beer very much! So trying to balance everything is the really important thing for me. It boils down to 3-6 beers a week and giving away as much as I can so that I can brew more often.

Now that I am thinking about it, I might start brewing smaller batches. I am already brewing not the biggest ones, but the resulting 28x0.5 l Bottles are still a lot to drink....

Welly well... Time to grind some malt and fire up the stove .

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

My personal approach is to give away as much as possible to free me of product that inhibits further production.

I really enjoy brewing and tweaking and I am also in the proces of succesfully getting shreaded and staying shreaded. So there is the deal for me... I have limited caloric capacity for Alcohol plus it really reduces my sleep quality which directly reduces live quality and slows down training progress. But I enjoy beer very much! So trying to balance everything is the really important thing for me. It boils down to 3-6 beers a week and giving away as much as I can so that I can brew more often.

Now that I am thinking about it, I might start brewing smaller batches. I am already brewing not the biggest ones, but the resulting 28x0.5 l Bottles are still a lot to drink....

Welly well... Time to grind some malt and fire up the stove .

I admire brewers that only drink a limited amount but I would seriously consider my brewing routine, just as you mentioned.

I enjoy the process (and history) as much as the drinking part but at some point that balance might have to change. 3-4 beers or 3-6 beers a week would be my turning point. Some weeks I don't drink at all but some days I'll have four or more beers in one setting. Much more gets consumed when my friends stop over.

I brew ten gallon batches now, down from 15 gallons, so to brew less would mean changing most of my system. Someday that might have to happen but that isn't now.

 

[flipster]

I'm at 54 'main' batches now since I started in 2019.

I had to dump 3 of them, because of an infection during fermentation. 2 of them in a row although I used a suggested cleaning process of the fermenter, chlorine included.
I started now to steamclean the barrel before filling it - put the barrel, the outlet and the o-rings over the kettle and boil water for 15min, dry it and sanitize with 70% isopropanol.

One batch I did split into a few smaller to add different fruits, the one with the kiwifruits got bad - I just added pureed fresh fruits, so no wonder that they included probably all kinds of wild bacteria.
And I had to dump one experiment using the yeast of a fermentation sample with some liters leftover wort, also got infected (no surprise...).

I almost dumped a batch of experimental ginger/orange peel-Hell because of the harsh bitter taste but it made a good radler for summer just by adding lemonade.

I wasn't happy with the 'very traditional hopped' Weizen I made, because it tasted like every other Weizen I can buy from each brewery around here - but having a 'boring' traditional Münchner Weiße instead of an 'exciting' flavourhopped Weizen of my own design is not a reason to dump it.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

I have brewed off and on for over 35 years; most seriously the last half dozen or so. The beginnings were very primitive pre-hopped liquid malt extracts that I could brew up on the kitchen stove and ferment on top of the fridge in a 6 gallon plastic bucket. I remember tons of yeast in the bottles and not the best taste, but I drank them anyway. (I didn’t have to fight anyone for them either.) Given this start, it wasn’t difficult to put brewing aside for awhile.
Later, I discovered a brewing supply store about an hour away. This offered good pre-packaged kits that I had decent results with. Except one; an Optimator clone that just didn’t carbonate in the bottle. I had no idea how to “fix” this, so I powered through 50 bottles of flat, high ABV, dark beer. (NOBODY wanted to help me with that!) That kinda led to another pause in my brewing.

After meeting a couple guys who were doing all-grain, I got excited about brewing again. I like starting from the basics. I like cooking too, and I would never cook a recipe that starts with a box of something someone else has mixed together or cooked; like a boxed cake mix or Campbell’s soup. This was definitely more my style. I also quickly moved to kegging; I didn’t want a repeat of the Optimator experience and I despised handling all the bottles.
I have dumped one. It was a Kölsch from an all grain kit I did way back that just had some off flavor. I didn’t have any temperature control back then and looking back, it was probably just fermented at too high a temperature. I tried to give it some time, but it didn’t get any better so I dumped it. It was a sad day.
I can appreciate Bobby’s take on it, but even my so-so beers have been better than some of the swill I used to buy at the store.

 

[Spartan1979]

I've been brewing over 30 years and can only remember dumping 3 batches.

The first was when I went to add Polyclar and grabbed the wrong container and added a cleaner. I realized right away what I had done and no one drank any.

The second was a club barrel project. It soured in the barrel. It was interesting, but not really that good.

The third was a batch a neighbor asked me to brew and then, for medical reasons, she couldn't drink it. It was fine, but not what I like. So, after a while I got tired of having it my kegerator so I dumped it.

My wife reminded me of a fourth batch I dumped.

I brewed a Saison using the DuPont yeast. I couldn't get it to finish so I ended up putting it in our downstairs bathroom with a space heater to raise the temp. I had that beer up to the 90's. Of course, this was in the summer during a heat wave and my wife thought I was nuts. It did finish but it had a very medicinal character. I'll never use that yeast again.

 

[sibelman]

ferment on top of the fridge in a 6 gallon plastic bucket

You lifted a batch onto your fridge? Great googly moogly, that's impressive!

 

[flipster]

You lifted a batch onto your fridge? Great googly moogly, that's impressive!

Depends on the fridge ... from my point there are two (main) types of fridges: the European standard - a built-in underdesk fridge, the size of a dishwasher, or the American 'standard' - I only know from movies and house flipping shows, from floor to ceiling with two stable doors, you litterally can hide a horse in or (like in the 5th Element) two persons.

The first option would be kind of easy ...

 

[Closet Fermenter]

You lifted a batch onto your fridge? Great googly moogly, that's impressive!

I was in my mid-20’s at the time. I was doing the only type of brewing that I knew about using mail-order pre-hopped, liquid malt extract in a metal can.
I can’t say for sure, because that was way back, but it is likely that I only put the contents from my boil pot on the stove into the plastic fermenter, and then added the makeup water to the 5 gallon mark once it was in position up top.
The additional benefit of this was that I could use my siphon hose to fill my bottles on the counter beside the fridge after it was done working.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

Depends on the fridge ... from my point there are two (main) types of fridges: the European standard - a built-in underdesk fridge, the size of a dishwasher, or the American 'standard' - I only know from movies and house flipping shows, from floor to ceiling with two stable doors, you litterally can hide a horse in or (like in the 5th Element) two persons.

The first option would be kind of easy ...

Mine was not a double-door model, but probably only about 5-½ feet tall, as my current one. This is right at eye level for me, so even though I am in my 60’s now, I could probably pull it off now if I didn’t add the makeup water until after lifting it up.

 

[Saunassa]

I believe i am my own worst critic. The one beer i made that just did not do it for me was a scotch heavy. Did not have as much flavor as I hoped. Bottled half, gave it to my neice. Her husband shared it with coworkers a month later and they all loved it.
I have yet to brew an IPA so maybe that has helped save me from dry hopping infection risk.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I believe i am my own worst critic. The one beer i made that just did not do it for me was a scotch heavy. Did not have as much flavor as I hoped. Bottled half, gave it to my neice. Her husband shared it with coworkers a month later and they all loved it.

That goes to show it's best to give it away than dumping down the drain!

 

[flipster]

And as we're talking, I might have produced another batch for the sink with my recent batch.
Fermentation went quite good, the sample I took to measure SG was good, also taste- and smellwise.
Then I added the dry hops socks - that might have been the root of all evil.

Today I've drawn another sample and an acidic smell like vomit got into my nose.
I might have caught a lacto bacillus infection for the 4th time. I'll give it a few more days and see if something changes. On Thursday I will decide if it's usable or I might rebrew it on the next weekend ( that would make 9 weeks before the ceremony)...

Luckily my stock escalation leaves me plenty of options to do another batch.

Update: my stomach is riding a roller coaster after the tasting sip from the brew an hour ago ... I'll dump it now. Makes it 4 out of 54 now...

 

[Jonakr]

I think I've dumped two, although early on I experimented a lot with added candy or whatever before I discovered how bad an idea that was. The two dumpers were infected.

 

[TexasTea]

knock on wood........zero so far out of about 50 brews. I've had some great, some better than others, some average, but no tossers yet. That includes mead and rice wine too.

 

[Brockness Monster]

I had to toss a Rauchbier. I'm sure it is the same mistake many make with their first (and in my case only) Rauchbier.

 

[wepeeler]

I've dumped maybe 5-7 batches in 7 years. Not saying everything was a hit, by any means! A lot of experimentation in the beginning. I've dumped maybe 3-4 beers with classic off flavors (diacetyl/sulfur) and 2ish with infections (band aid/medicinal). DEEP cleaned everything from then on and been on a pretty good no dump streak lately *jinxed*

 

[leedspointbrew]

48 batches since 2019; quite a few dumpers (1 immediate, 4-5 shortly after bottling, most recently a stout extract kit that I got gratis on Marketplace, not lamenting the loss).
Try to limit drinking to 3-5 beers over the course of any given weekend, so QA of each is important, but sometimes drinking meh unavoidable. Also drinking meh is useful in not reiterating a lame recipe.

 

[DonT]

Every once in a while I'll have to do this to a full keg, usually I'll try and drink it but if I can't deal, the grass gets fertilized.