worst beer you ever made

[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

 

[Skelator]

a chocloate raspberry stout. Gf bought the wrong yeast (german ale) and I didnt check before using it. I dont have a temp controlled ferm chamber, so i had to get my apt as close to <65 as i could... ended up fermenting at about 68-70 (too high), and i used thawed raspberries which floated and ended up with a little bit of white film on them by the time i racked. Also, i forgot about priming sugar so i had to use table sugar... which i didnt measure out correctly so it overcarbbed the beer.

It was too fizzy instead of carb'd, weird raspberry twang, off flavors from the yeast, and it wasnt full bodied at all, it was very thin. Definately the worst beer ive ever made.

 

[Sardoman]

Dry Irish Stout partial mash. I oversparged and extracted tons of tannins from the roasted barley. Also fermented too high. Nasty, astringent bitterness, funky yeast esters, fiery fusels and I had to dump it.

 

[liebertron]

My second batch of fat tire clone. No idea what went wrong but anytime you opened a bottle the whole bottle turned to fizz and it tasted like yeasty tap water.

 

[zurcj20]

Second batch, Brewers "best" mexican cervesa almost 2 1/2 years ago. Choked down the first case. The second has been sitting ever since. Actually cracked one the other week and while the nastiness has subdued a little bit it is still nasty. Oh well, Maybe next year.

 

[jmprdood]

A big pale ale - I under estimated what it would take to carb it up. So while drinkable, not very balanced because it was poorly carbonated.

 

[beerhound28]

Every beer i made besides 1 lucky batch..tasted like it came from an elephants ass

 

[supe_kitchen]

Every beer i made besides 1 lucky batch..tasted like it came from an elephants ass

Temperature control during fermentation! My beer went from 2/10 being good to 9.9/10 being good with a Johnson controller and a used fridge off of Craigslist.

 

[Riffraff3055]

A 10-gallon all-grain batch of american pale ale that started out palatable and slowly devolved into a thin, watery, band-aid, and pepto bismol flavored disaster. Luckily we drank 3 cases before it got really bad and I had to dump the final 20 bottles.

 

[jkarp]

This one's easy. Magic Hat #9. The apricot extract I got from the LHBS was so vile I not only dumped the entire keg, I had to replace that line in my kegerator as the extract permeated it too, tainting any other brews I tried to run through it.

I will never again mess with artificial extracts.

 

[BradleyBrew]

Coopers Wheat no boil kit, expired Wit Yeast with no starter ... YIKES!

 

[dhatman]

Early brewing days in an apartment.
Using blow off method in a bleach quart jar.
Placed in Closet to ferment.
Cold snap
Bleach water into fermenter.
tasted like moose-piss

 

[malc]

The worst was a Mr. Beer kit. Awful. Other than that it was a honey wheat. I just didn't care for it.

 

[stratslinger]

Mine was a toss up:

First beer I made was a kit my mother in law gave me - extract Oktoberfest from "The Homebrewery." It was a true lager (S-23 and all) and my basement was cold enough to pull it off, but the kit had an OG of only 1.039. Not a whole lot of body on that one. It was beer, but that's about all that could be said of it.

The other was another extract kit I made - one of the last extract kits I made, in fact. Sad thing was, it would've been a great beer. Except I assumed that the ingredients, priming DME included, were all correctly premeasured. A dozen bottle bombs later, I got the beer basically under control, and had a tasty beer that was carbonated closer to a ginger ale. More a disappointment than anything...

 

[othevad]

Mine would be the tongue splitter from Northern Brewer. First extract batch I did, and I figured by the name it would be a really hoppy IPA. It was hardly tongue splitting, not bad, just not what the name would suggest.

 

[BasementBrewmistress]

Worst non-infected batch? Brewcraft's Dry Irish Stout extract kit. It was designed a pound light on fermentables...my notes are something like:

Black water, artificial chocolate, and weak, old coffee about sums it up.

 

[Curtis2010]

Oh I remember it well....Buckwheat Honey Stout....sounds nice doesn't?

It was an early learning experience about brewing with honey. My original thought was that a heavier variety of honey would best complement a stout. So, I chose Buckwheat Honey. Unfortunately, the sugars in honey are almost 100% fermentable so what you are left with is the other flavor components.

When I drew the first sample glass it was an absolutely beautiful stout...dark, thick rich head..I took the first sip and it had a lovely creamy mouthfeel and a nice robust hops flavor...I swallowed it...the result was like being awakened from a wonderful dream by cold water in your face....the after taste was indescribably awful...there is a substance called "creosote" that is used as a wood preservative...the aftertaste was what I imagine creosote tastes like.

It was very frustrating because otherwise it was a great stout....like meeting a beautiful woman and then discovering that she's not anatomically correct !

 

[jimmayhugh]

My most recent stout...

Nice aroma, good mouthfeel, pretty good flavor, just too much heat from the cayenne.

It's still young, so I'm hoping a few weeks ( months ) of cellaring will help diffuse the heat.

 

[cl330b]

I tried to make a Hefe last summer that tasted horrible. I'm not sure what I did wrong. I thought it would be easy due to the minimal amount of ingredients. It was terrible! My wife would not drink it.

... Anyway, I finished the entire keg myself. That was my one and only attempt at a Hefe.

 

[Bubba]

Mine was also a Hefe partial mash I hated it kept is so long it actually cleared up I ended up giving to one of my buddies who would drink just about anything.....I never made another wheat beer again.

 

[LMGK]

Belgian pale ale extract kit from more beer. I,m pretty sure they mixed up there steeping grains that came with the kit because it turned out to be a dark beer color. No infection , everything came out great just tasted like liqourish. Let it sit 3 months and still tasted off. Gave a lot away but for my taste it was undrinkable other people didn't really say anything bad about it.

 

[Brewpastor]

Every wheat beer I ever made.

 

[Mongoose40]

One of the first batches I made. It was a belgian style blonde ale, and I fermented it way too cold. I also bottled it way too early. The combination basically left me with a diacetyl laden, thick, sugary, skunky beer.

 

[tmd49]

A Irish stout clone using stressed yeast tasted like burnt rubber and bacon.....

 

[CBXBob]

My second attempt at brewing was a wheat extract kit, don't know what went wrong, but the beer had an after taste I can only describe as "funky". Just could not drink it, so sad to toss 5 gallons of beer
Lucky for me the first attempt (blonde ale) and third attempt (porter) were good, so I was hooked. I still expect to make beer that will disappoint me, but in the mean time I'm enjoying the adventure of brewing.

 

[spearko520]

well i've got a banana lambic right now that had a lot of clostridium in it and 4 months in and the vomit smell hasn't subsided. this may be my worst, but i just added a little brett l and i am hopeful it will blend. it is very very sour- but it is tough to sip...

 

[H-ost]

Only hefe I have made/drank so far. Tasted like crap.... I remade it and we will soon see how it is.

 

[WesleyS]

First beer I ever made. It was supposed to be a cherry wheat. The friend that introduced me to home brewing picked up all the ingredients but didn't get everything right including buying blackberry flavoring instead of cherry. The resulting beer was pretty bad, sweet, unbalanced, under carbonated, with a lingering artificial fruit flavor. Good thing it was only one gallon. At that point I started reading everything I could about brewing and quickly jumped into AG.

 

[PhelanKA7]

Funny how many people bring up hefeweizen. That was probably my worst too.. A Blood Orange hefeweizen to be exact. It was like the beer equivalent of a dull butter knife. Uninteresting and totally useless. A friend of mine and his wife loved it but hated a BIPA that my wife and I really enjoy. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

 

[Krazykripple]

my first brew was a Munich Lager kit which i fermented at around 25 C (77f). it was pretty bad

 

[corkybstewart]

I brewed a 10 gallon batch of pale ale years ago that I could not drink. It wasn't nasty like infected but just tasted awful. I turned most of the first keg into excellent malt vinegar, but I forgot about the second keg for over a year. When I found it I was about to pour it out in the yard but it had aged beautifully and was really excellent. Later I brewed a batch with WLP 007 and realized that it was the yeast flavor I hated so much in that beer.