When do you give up and dump it?

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klnosaj

klnosaj

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I made my house pale ale several months ago and knew as soon as I opened it after carbonation that something was wrong (acetaldehyde, I think, from oxygenation when I transferred from kettle to fermenter around ~85F). It's palatable, though just barely. I'm drinking one now after having had a couple of two t'ree (or four or five...) other things already and all I can think is that I wish I was drinking something else. It's never going to be good. Meanwhile, I have around 5 cases of good beer sitting around waiting to be drinked. Is it OK if I dump the rest of this polluted batch? I already slogged through more than half of it and have only 2 six-packs of it left. Will I go to home brewer hell if I pour it down the drain hole instead of my beer hole?
 
Grit your teeth and bare it! Drink it all. Heck, you could even fashion up a beer bong if ya want it to be over quick.

At a very minimum it'll build character. :D
 
I'd never dump a batch, under any circumstance. Save it, it might work out fine after months of aging.
 
Had a batch that came out pure bananas...it was a pale ale recipe. I think isoamyl acetate was the problem. It wasn't easy but I drank em all. Helped me appreciate fermentation temp control.
 
If you need the bottles, dump it. If you don't, then keep it. What harm are they doing in the back of your closet? None.
 
The way i see it its your beer you do what you want with it. If you need the bottles very soon go ahead and dump it. If your sure your not ganna drink it and no one you know will ether then dump it. If you dump a beer and no one is around to witness did you really dump it. Its just beer you dont really like anyway, why keep it if you cant enjoy it. Try again later you'll love the next one and forget all about it.
 
i hate dumping a beer, but even more i hate making a bad beer. if i do, i punish myself by dumping it violently while i think about what i did wrong. it's punishment, it's cathartic. dump it if it tastes bad. if it's just young it will get better, if it's a bad beer those bottles are better off empty. imo
 
I dumped it. And here's why:

uncommonsense said:
If your sure your not ganna drink it and no one you know will ether then dump it. Its just beer you dont really like anyway, why keep it if you cant enjoy it. Try again later you'll love the next one and forget all about it.
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dinnerstick said:
i hate dumping a beer, but even more i hate making a bad beer. if i do, i punish myself [I am ****ing awesome at this] by dumping it violently while i think about what i did wrong. it's punishment, it's cathartic. dump it if it tastes bad...if it's a bad beer those bottles are better off empty. imo
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Thanks for all the help to all of you who took a second to reply. Dumping it was much more difficult than I imagined it could be. It was like running over my own dog...intentionally (even if she was a *****...ba dum bump!).
 
I'd dump it as well and have done so on 2 or 3 occasions. If it sucks or something went wrong I'll leave it to try a few times just to make sure it isn't getting any better but if I need the keg space then out it goes. So many people here get all crazy about never dumping a batch. to each his own but in my opinion, if you don't like it, dump it.
 
I've only dumped once. It was a pumpkin ale that happened to be in the basement when we got flooded during the hurricane. Didn't think much of it but when I popped the bucket open a month or so later it was disgustingly sour. A part of me died along with that batch.
 
My first batch was a disappointment and I ended up dumping a good portion of it after waiting to see if it got any better. I'd messed up during bottling and oxygenated every bottle, so it was only going to get worse. I ended up needing to dump some anyway to use the bottles, so I didn't feel like I was wasting much. This was after I'd tried a decent amount.

My roommate and I always joke that if a brew doesn't turn out great, we can always donate it to a nice homeless guy. :mug:
 
One of my first batches was a honey wheat that tasted fine after two weeks of bottle carbing but steadily got worse over the next few weeks... got to the point where it was no fun to drink so I pitched the rest (about 30 bottles)...

**** happens and so does sh!tty beer... live, learn and move on to better brews...!
 
klnosaj said:
I'm at the moment where I realized life is too short for drinking crappy beer.
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Exactly. I've dumped a few batches and never thought it was an issue until I discovered these boards. I will give it time but I won't choke down a bad beer.
 
I'm in this dilemma right now. I brewed BM's blue balls recipe listed in my signature. The boil went fine, numbers were right on. Something happened during fermentation as it started out fine then suddenly stopped. I ended up adding some boiled orange peel in the secondary (probably too much). The beer smells like hot dog water and tastes like orange peel. I've tried it a few times but I'm going to have to dump it, it just plain sucks.
 
klnosaj said:
I'm at the moment where I realized life is too short for drinking crappy beer.
Click to expand...

Exactly! Isn't that why we're here, because we wanted something better?
In my opinion, if the beer I made isn't as good or better than something I can buy at the store, why the hell would I drink it?
Needless to day, I dump a beer every once in a while. I don't cry about it, but I also think it's important that you figure out where you screwed up so you don't do it again.
 
I usually give it a good try but in the end if I'm not going to drink it, then down it goes. Life is too short to drink crappy beer. Recently dumped an Xmas Ale that was just not good. I needed the keg more than I needed to choke that stuff down.
 
A good home-brewer once told me that time will fix any brew, but, when it cannot, you must think of it as a baby, if you had an ugly baby you wouldn't dump it lol, you gotta grit those teeth.
 
the point is not to make bad beer and keep it.


when something goes wrong and isn't fixable, figure out what it was and move on, sometimes that means dumping it.
 
My father in law bought me an extract kit last fall. He was really excited about because he bought it from the store he bought homebrew kits from when he was in college(which was the early 70's so it was probably illegal). I don't brew extract anymore but thought I would brew it anyways. It turned out awful, I let it sit in the keg for 6 months and it didn't get any better. I tried adding hops to a pint and it didn't help. I couldn't even get my friends who like crapppy beer to drink it. Finally I need space in the keezer and had to dump it. He is over seas and my wife keeps telling him how good it is. I am afraid he will buy me another crappy kit because of her lies. :)
 
i love how divided this subject is. those proud brewers who choke down a bad batch, i respect you. but in the way i respect a streaker at a tennis match. better you than me!
 
I have no problem dumping them after a few months. Some I hold on to longer just hoping they mellow or at least change to something else that's differently offensive. I'm still holding onto some 75-80 degree Skeeter Pee that I made last April but it's not improved at all.
 
I won't hesitate to dump a batch. I've even dumped when there's absolutely nothing wrong with it at all - I just got tired of drinking it. Although lately I've been trying to make an effort to give these ones away instead of dumping it.
 
Dumped an entire keg of beer that had oxidized in the basement for a few months (leak in the main lid)... we learn from our mistakes and improve each subsequent batch. If I want to eat cardboard I'll head over to office depot... but I prefer good beer.
 
I've dumped many batches. Some weren't good, and an equal number I was just tired of. Might dump a keg of perfectly good berliner weisse this wkend... it's been sittting around for 6 months in a keg and I rarely hit it.

Seriously, why is that a big deal? I get pretty excited to have the keg freed up (I've got 10g of belgian quad that's been waiting for months to get into a keg!).

I like beer a lot, but there is zero mystique there for me. I don't revere it.
 
passedpawn said:
I've dumped many batches. Some weren't good, and an equal number I was just tired of. Might dump a keg of perfectly good berliner weisse this wkend... it's been sittting around for 6 months in a keg and I rarely hit it.

Seriously, why is that a big deal? I get pretty excited to have the keg freed up (I've got 10g of belgian quad that's been waiting for months to get into a keg!).

I like beer a lot, but there is zero mystique there for me. I don't revere it.
Click to expand...

+1... im the same way...keep the beer making train going...my favorite part of the hobby is the process...i only have a beer or two a day..if that. Sometimes you just get tired of the taste and want something else on tap...

you can always make more..
 
If it's not terrible but you don't see yourself drinking it and you feel bad about just dumping it, maybe you can cook with it.
 
i have one my 3rd (on my 8th now) that will take 6 to 8 months,it's
in bottles now "put away" it was a might "hot"....
 
passedpawn said:
I've dumped many batches. Some weren't good, and an equal number I was just tired of. Might dump a keg of perfectly good berliner weisse this wkend... it's been sittting around for 6 months in a keg and I rarely hit it.

Seriously, why is that a big deal? I get pretty excited to have the keg freed up (I've got 10g of belgian quad that's been waiting for months to get into a keg!).

I like beer a lot, but there is zero mystique there for me. I don't revere it.
Click to expand...

I wish I lived in FL. I'd help you kick that sucker.
 
I made a blood orange wheat beer once, only I couldn't find any blood oranges and went with grapefruit on a whim...used way too many...yeah, the sink drank that one after a couple months.

I usually just give most of my brews away to friends and family, but I have too much pride to give away bad beer I guess!
 
I dump a lot of beer as well. Sometimes there is something seriously wrong with it, other times I just don't like the flavor of it. I've been brewing and drinking beer long enough to realize that if I don't like the beer I'm drinking, I can dump it and make one I do like. I have also been known to give entire kegs of beer away to friends if I don't want to drink it. They go through beer like nobody's business and I usually get a cleaned and sanitized keg back within a week or two from them.
 

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