worst beer you ever made

[Brewpastor]

Besides the nasty infected crap that went down the drain, what was the worst beer you ever made?

Mine was a Blue Corn American lager - it was just plain bad. Out of balance with a funky corn flavor that made it taste like paste.

 

[david_42]

I had a stout my first year that we dumped after a few pints. Michael put it, "There wasn't any there there."

 

[GrizlyGarou]

I've never made bad beer.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

 

[GuitarBob]

Mine was a Mr. Beer kit. I think it was called dark tower brown ale or something like that. It was probably a decent recipe, but I decided to add a packet of booster I had left over from a previous Mr. Beer kit.

The end result was a high alcohol beer that tasted like cidery crap. Lesson learned, don't boost the gravity of a beer just for the sake of boosting gravity.

 

[david_42]

I'm not counting the two Brew S(u)cks bag-o-barf fails. They could not be called beer, even bad beer, not even very bad beer. We're talking compost killer sludge.

 

[McKBrew]

I've got a keg and a half of an IIPA style I brewed a few months back. I kind of got angry because I couldn't find my hydrometer and some other things, and so I just started adding random ingredients. Stupid I know.

Half the batch is oaked and I haven't touched it.

The other half is not. I had to ferment at room temp because the 20G trash can wouldn't fit in the refrigerator. Lots of hot alcohol and pretty sweet as I don't think some of the items I added fermented well.

I might sample the regular version again before I dump it.

The oak one, I'm just going to leave alone for another few months or so.

 

[HBRunner]

Mine was a Pete's Wicked Ale Clone.......Never did figure out what went wrong with it....It was just plain bad......

 

[LibertyBrewer]

My first batch of Ed Wort's Haus Ale was a disaster. It was also my first all grain try. I did something wrong, and ended up with about 8 gallons of wort. I boiled it for 60 minutes, and did my hops additions just like I was supposed to. I cooled it down, and took a gravity reading. I ended up boiling it for another 45 minutes to get the gravity right. To say, it was a bitter ale was an understatement. I had 2 bottles of it sitting around and on sunday, I was running out of home brew, and opened one of them. Age hadn't improved it any. I made Mrs. Libertybrewer take a drink of it, and then poured both of them down the drain.

The next batch was fine.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

My attempt at the ubiquitous Caramel Cream Ale was awful. I think it suffered from poor yeast health. Regardless, I wasn't motivated to try again.

 

[Heineken]

Actually drinking it right now. I made a Hefeweizen that had very low efficiency - around 55%. Tastes very watered down and not much flavor, or alcohol, which is why it is my worst.

 

[s3n8]

I made a batch of roggenbier with 1/3 ea 2 row, wheat, and rye. I think it was my second all grain brew, probably a year and a half ago. I still have about 6l left. I just dont like it, and I have not found anyone who does.

 

[arturo7]

I tried a farmhouse last summer. Figured my garage would be perfect for 85-90 deg fermentation. Unfortunately we had some hot weather, garage temp was just over 100.

It was nasty, nasty, nasty.

 

[Cheeto]

My worst was a Raspberry ale that I tried to make, when it was green it had hope but after a few months of aging it went from iffy to crappy.

I think I still have 20-30 bottles of it left in the basement in hopes that it will get better

 

[Six_O_Turbo]

First and second 15 gallon all grain brews. One nut brown and a irish red. Both were brewed at about the same time (week apart) and everything went pretty well. Fermentation was in mid summer and we had no temperature control so it got up easily over 80 while fermening. Nasty hot alcohol flavors, smelled terrible, tastes like... evil.

Six months later it still tasted nasty and never even clarified. I suspect I may have had an infection as well as temp issues. It got dumped just for the bottles/kegs.

 

[pirate252]

two...one was a Christmas ale that I accidentally doubled up the spice bill that tastes like ass and the other (dubbed Hefeweizen ****) was a IPA that accidentally got a hef yeast pitched into it... was TERRIBLE!

 

[Mattbastard]

I tried a farmhouse last summer. Figured my garage would be perfect for 85-90 deg fermentation. Unfortunately we had some hot weather, garage temp was just over 100.

It was nasty, nasty, nasty.

Are you implying you were planning on fermenting it at 90*?

 

[jarrman00]

My friend talked me into making a Cherry Wheat. Enough said.

Never again will I drink a fruit beer with out fearing it will taste like cake.

 

[PseudoChef]

Second batch.

I harvested yeast out of a Bell's Oberon bottle, but didn't make nearly a big enough starter from it. Pitched into an American Wheat.

Welcome to Phenolicville, population: Band-Aids.

 

[Arneba28]

Pumpkin Amber ale here. it had the worst bitter pumpkin taste, always stayed hazy. weird C hop taste. After almost a year of aging it was still horrid. none of the flavors blended, just horrid.

 

[ottobrew]

I made a Christmas beer about a year ago. The beer wasn't infected, but I put too many spices and such into the beer and it tasted horrible. My Christmas gift idea fell through about 2 weeks before Christmas when I realized the beer really tasted awful. I kept some around til about June just to see if it would get any better with age.... I dumped it all out, and it smelled just as bad as it tasted.

 

[arturo7]

Are you implying you were planning on fermenting it at 90*?

Yup. Wyeast 3724

 

[scrambledegg81]

My first IPA, which (thankfully) I have only 1 bottle left to polish off from...

a) Never turned out as hoppy as I had hoped (despite almost 4 oz. of hops...)
b) It had a high-temp fermentation (75+) and a low-temp boil, because it tastes monstrously sweet, almost like drinking straight extract!
c) WAAAAAAAAAAAAY over-carbed. Most likely due to the carb drops & overly-sweetened "final product" I tossed into about 2 cases worth of bottles. Lucky that none went kablooey on me... o_o

It's odd saving-grace is that it still provides a decent buzz....

 

[rawl28]

My worst beer was definitely my pumpkin spice. We got it boiling at like 3am and started throwing the spices in. Well, the cloves smelled really good, so we just kept adding them by the handful, needless to say, it has alot of "character."

 

[flyangler18]

First AG - 'twas a dry stout that gave me fits on the sparge, inconsistent mash temps and was pitched too hot; the resulting beer was thin, astringent and just bad.

I think I may still have a bottle tucked away somewhere. Perhaps it's turned into something half way decent.

 

[Jesse Seymour]

My worst ever batch was a Mr. Beer brew to which I added way too many extra ingredients. I started with a Vienna Lager kit, added 2 cups of table sugar, an extra pack of Booster, a half a jar of black strap molasses and about 3 cups of brown sugar.

On top of that I accidentally let the fermenter get up to 95 degrees. The result was something that could be described as black rubbing alcohol.

Shortly after that disaster I found this site and convinced my SWMBO to let me buy "real brewing equipment". Two years later and many happy brews my SWMBO volunteered up half of our only refrigerator to house my two corny kegs as long as I keep a Raspberry Wheat on tap at all times.

 

[nealf]

Vanilla Caramel Cream Ale. Underpitch and probably fermented hot. My wife loved it; however, I did not care for it and will not be trying it again.

 

[Yooper]

Vanilla Caramel Cream Ale. Underpitch and probably fermented hot. My wife loved it; however, I did not care for it and will not be trying it again.

That was my worst batch, too. I did a pretty good job of brewing it, but it came out tasting like cream soda (the soda pop) with beer added. My friend liked it, and she eventually drank both cases.

 

[Baja_Brewer]

A stout that I pitched onto a poorly washed cake. It tasted like A$$!

 

[Aubie Stout]

Muncher's cream of 3 crops. I believe my HBS gave me a thousand year old ounce of Liberty hops......

 

[wcarter1227]

mine was a porter that I added cherry and vanilla extract. it tasted good at bottling time but i made a mistake with sanitation and it got infected and soured up reallly fast and got really over carbed. after 4 months in bottles i finally threw it away cause it tasted like fermented cherry coke beer. will never add cherry to beer again