worst beer you ever made

[permo]

I made a beer with munich and pale base, fermented cool with pacman....it was shaping up to be really nice. Then I went ahead and used a ton of Argentine Cascade hops in it. Made it taste like earthy, dirty, cardboard. Not good.

 

[Gduck]

I have a beer members of our club lovingly refer to as fizzy pine sol. I tried using some spruce extract when I was still fairly new at brewing and failed to follow directions or use the recommended amount. It's a pretty nasty beer that I still have bottles of. Every holiday party we break one out just to see what new layer of hell it has evolved in to.

 

[jdlev]

This is easy...a honey brown that tasted like a sour cube of old ass sugar

 

[brew95]

This is easy...a honey brown that tasted like a sour cube of old ass sugar

I made a honey ale once. It was so bad that we used it as a penance for anyone who committed a party foul.

 

[makomachine]

I took a perfectly good Janets Brown Ale kit and decided to add coconut to it for something different. The blend of cascade and coconut has done it zero favors as it's got older - hardly drinkable.

 

[dfc]

the funniest thing is the descriptions of the taste of nasty beer.

burnt wet dog, ass, vomit. etc etc etc....lol

My nasty batch was like drinking rusted tin.

 

[McBrewskie]

I made a honey ale once. It was so bad that we used it as a penance for anyone who committed a party foul.

Lol. Good to know how best to use the bad brews.

 

[mhenry41h]

My 1st beer. I had brewed 1 Mr Beer kit Pale Ale at the time and decided I was jumping into all-grain and writing my own recipe. Well, it wasn't a simple recipe as I decided to make a Brown Porter with Coconut and Chocolate Nibs. I didnt use any clarifying agents, used WAY too much roasted malt, boiled my coconut flakes for 20 minutes, and used 2 lbs of cocoa nibs. Well, its way too strong of roast, cloudy with some sort of floating particulate in it, tastes nothing of coconut, and probably too strong of chocolate. Truth be told, if it wasnt so damned ugly to look at, it could be drank...but I cant get it past my eyes...

 

[wyoder]

In my early days of brewing I was ending up with lots of leftover ingredients, some older than others. Lots of dark extracts and dark/roasted grains, a few different spicy hops, and a 4 strain Lager/Ale yeast from White Labs.

So i just threw them all together to see what would happen. Beef jerky isn't so great when it's liquid and carbonated.

I can't bring myself to ever dump a beer so I drank every last glass. mmmmmm.....

 

[SammyRoy]

Mine's a two parter: add one whole diced green pepper per gallon of wort, what could go wrong? Turns out if you drink it before ~4 months aging, it tastes like brown hell. Wait another few months, it actually starts to taste good! All in all, I'm not sure the experience was worth it...

 

[jouimette]

I'm not sure, but I have one that I'm afraid to keg, and refuse to spend the time bottling.
I have transferred it twice, and it hasn't improved in flavor!
Honey wheat plumb beer. I am not a sour beer drinker so I think it taste lite crap. I bet if I entered it as a sour, it would take a ribbon, bur I cannot stomach it!!

 

[AlligatorCadaver]

So far my worst beer made is what was supposed to be a Hefeweizen. I was really looking forward to this beer... but life had to teach me a lesson in fermentation temperatures. I let it ferment way to hot @ 76ish degrees (room temp) and what I ended up with was something that tasted like banana malt liquor. It's drinkable but the banana flavor won't leave even after 3 months and it still has that nasty cheap beer taste in the background. Gives the worse headaches the next day also.

 

[Jenks829]

Brewed a Black IPA for a contest on short notice. Because I wanted it done so quickly, it was designed to be a low ABV (~3%). I did reduce the hop quantities but I guess not enough. The beer was bitter.....very bitter. My first sip I though "Oh, this is good, this might have a chance at.....OH MY GOD! MY THROAT IS CLOSING!! WHAT IS GOING ON! AHH! WHY AM I SWEATING!!!"

It's been aging for a while; bitterness has slightly faded. I drink one every now and again. My throat doesn't close anymore but it is still way too bitter.

 

[ChadC]

I've brewed 7 extract batches and all that I have tasted were good (1 batch still fermenting) except for a BeerMakers XXX Bitter, my 4th batch. Tasted like band aid/ garden hose.
The kit was expired, (date on can 2008),and I brewed w/ dextrose only. I rehydrated the yeast, it appeared dead but I pitched it anyway. After 3 days the yeast was not looking active in the carboy so I pitched another packet of yeast.
Fermentation began and let it sit for 3 weeks.
Tasted bad at bottling time and after 2 weeks in bottles it was just (barely) drinkable. It was thin and fizzy with a bit of cider flavour (duh dextrose) but the band aid flavour stayed, it was mellowed some (3-4 weeks bottled) but still there. I drank them all ice cold....but I drank them.
I have since found out my city uses chloromine, last few batches I used campden tabs, no more band aid, so far.

 

[Hex]

Don't try this at home, kids.

 

[mredge73]

My second All Grain, first 5 gal all grain, I call it "Nutmeg Lite".
Holiday Ale kit from More Beer.
I got pitiful efficiently, likely due to a poor crush.
On top of that I made 2 gallons more than I should have, Beer Smith over estimated my boil off and my notes from the previous 10gal batch didn't scale well.

Now I have a lite beer that tastes like Nutmeg even though nutmeg was not used in the creation of it (I think the flavor is from the all spice used). Hoping the spices mellow out by my Christmas party and someone will help me drink it up so I can make room for something better.

 

[jstuts2260]

I got late notice for a competition at my girlfriend's work. I split a Wheat recipe. One was a blueberry wheat which was purple and tasted like nothing. The other half I used too much orange peel and it tasted like ass. Chicks really like it, but I can't stand the stuff.

 

[gtlaw10]

this thread is fantastic!!
worst beer to date was an irish red that i forgot about and left in primary, at uncontrolled temperatures, from july until midnovember. found it, sampled, fought the rising bile and poured it down the drain. never again will i leave a comrade for so long unattended.

 

[KrazyKajun]

I've had a few "learning experiences" over the years...my absolute worst was brewed in 2001 and became known as the "Gatorade of Beers" by my Marine Corps brothers.

I attempted to brew a Wit and wanted to put a "hint" of orange in it, but didn't know what I was doing at all. I grated zest off of an orange that I had in the kitchen and ended up with way too much orange in the beer. Needless to say, I couldn't drink more than 1/4 of a cup of this stuff. Horrible stuff!

Thankfully, there were a few women that actually liked it...fed them the entire batch...

 

[Andrewtherooster]

Don't try this at home, kids.

What sort of beer did you use that in? I've used date sugar in a Belgian Dark Strong, and it turned out great.


Worst beers:

-A "lambic" that some friends and I made without knowing anything about lambics. We made some extract recipe, fermented with a pound or so of assorted frozen berries, and worst of all, used a rinse sanitizer that we forgot to rinse out.

-A tea beer in which we over-steeped several bags of the cheapest black tea we could find and tossed the tea into the boil. The result was an astringent mess that makes me cringe whenever I think about it.

-The second or third beer we ever made involved my friend and I going to the LHBS and choosing random herbs/hops/malt extract. It contained "mugwort" and "irish moss" simply because we thought they sounded cool.

 

[1stTimer]

I would have to say the Pumpkin porter I did recently. The flavor was good but due to some bad caps only a few of them ever carbed. I was not happy.

The other would be a honey ale I did. Misread the steps and added 4.5lbs of honey to a 5 gallon batch. Needless to say if you drink it your teeth will fall out. Very sweet. Ive put it away and am going to wait a few years and give it another try. Who knows.

 

[klnosaj]

I have a 1 and a 1a. I got a really bad recipe for a Cream Ale from one of the guys at the LHBS. It was my first time not using a kit and it tasted so bad that I threw it out after 6 months of hoping it would get better. When I showed the recipe to another guy at the same store he winced at all the hops additions. That's when I discovered the IBU!

The other was a kit from Northern Brewer. I only bought it because I wanted to try the rye extract they developed even though I'm almost exclusively an AG brewer. The kit didn't ship with the proper ingredients (missing some 2 pounds of LME) and I only had about 1/2 lb on hand. I didn't realize it was wonky until I had already added the hops for the regular kit so it was waaay out of balance. And rye ain't that great in beer anyway, it turns out.

 

[JonM]

There they are - my gusher infected robust porter. I tried letting out the excess carbonation and I tried being patient, but after six months they still gushed and still tasted like crap, so down the drain they go.

 

[thepartsmancometh]

Made a (thankfully only) 1 gal batch of a local ingredients peach and honey beer. Great idea! But I used way too much dme and honey. It is very very boozy.

Oh yea...bottling may have been done while drinking. Neglected to strain the peach pulp so every glass has chunks in it!

 

[edb23]

mines in the keg right now, I don't always check gravities but this pale ale must have had some real low efficiency because it's just watered down and bland, the bmc crowd (i.e. most of my buddies) seem to enjoy it though, so i can drink my porter and they can drink this

 

[nulfis]

My first AG attempt was Brooklyn Beer Shop's Everday IPA. I suspect my big issue was leaving leftover spent grains in my boil kettle from my earlier use of the pot for the mash. I also turbo sparged by just pouring the full pot of sparge water out on the grains.

The final beer had little carbonation, an initially watery, flat taste, and then a nasty pine sol aftertaste would grab hold of your throat as it went down. I drank every miserable bottle of it, because at least it would get you drunk. (Thank god it was only 10 bottles.)

 

[phenry]

Ranger IPA clone. Not nearly enough hops, too much sugar, and just plain bad. Brewed it back in June of last year, I still had an entire case that I finally dumped this weekend.

And then there was another IPA that every single bottle was a gusher. Not sure what happened to that one, I used the washed yeast for a IIPA that turned out fine.

 

[supe_kitchen]

I am still a fan of the idea that there are no bad beers, only beers that are less desirable to drink.

Having said that, my one attempt at a smoked porter was a drain pour. We dubbed the beer KC Masterbeer because of the BBQ flavor and I couldn't find one person who enjoyed it. One person described it as liquid bacon, which really isn't as good as it sounds, and personally I couldn't get down more than one in a drinking session.

I also drain poured my one attempt at a lambic, but that was pretty early in my brewing career and I may try that again with much more patience.

 

[b-boy]

my brother used a Mr beer kit to do a fruit beer of some kind. He also did a hard cider. Both were awful. The worst part was that we couldn't figure out which was which.

 

[thepartsmancometh]

I am still a fan of the idea that there are no bad beers, only beers that are less desirable to drink.

Totally agree! I've never dumped a beer. The chunky honey peach got mixed with double the amount of bourbon porter in a pitcher and want nearly as bad. I always try to mix it or doctor it up before dumping