Your Greatest Beer Failures

[boatcapt]

We've all made them...Something that just sounds like it would be the PERFECT adjunct, style or process but the result on first tasting is a "spit it out immediately" moment that causes you to either question your brewing competency OR your sanity for EVER thinking doing THAT was a good idea!! So let's hear about them in all their glory!!

I brewed what I hoped was going to be a beef jerky infused IPA a couple of years back. That had to be the most putrid beer I've ever put into my mouth. Zippy head, smelled terrible and tasted even worse! I must have looked like one of those statues spitting a beer plume across the entire length of my kitchen when I tried to drink that sh!t!! That was an immediate dumper but it took me four washes of my carboy to get rid of the grease that had coated every nook and cranny! Needless to say, I no longer brew with meat products!!!

So let's hear about your personal epic FAILS!!!!

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

When I first started out making my own recipes I threw way too many hops into an IPA and it was straight up like drinking a glass of perfume. It was actual proof you can have too much of a good thing. More is not always better.


Sent from somewhere to someone

 

[kombat]

Bacon Smoked Porter.

Came out slick and oily with no head retention whatsoever.

 

[BigJoeBrew]

Not a brewing failure, but a bottling failure. When I first started brewing my first bottling experience I put twice the amount of sugar to carb. No bottle bombs, but cracked the first one open in front of friends and nothing but foam for 5 minutes! No one took my beers seriously for awhile.

 

[danz]

Added lbs of slightly toasted raw coconut into a porter in secondary and forgot about it for a month...I sure got the coconut flavor and aroma then a nasty metallic aftertaste that made the beer god awful and was perfectly fine before I added the coconut.

 

[JimEb]

Figured someone has tried brewing with a meat product.

Having thanksgiving dinner last week I finally cracked into my pumpkin ale. Told my 6-yr old that I brewed it months ago just for thanksgiving. She then said, "Why don't you make a turkey flavored beer?" What made that moment even funnier is I bet someone out there has already attempted to make a turkey beer.

 

[rowan57]

Needless to say, I no longer brew with meat products!!!

I like the fact you even tried it!

 

[wildactbrewer]

My mom wanted me to make her a small batch of brown ale for Christmas last year. She barely drinks at all but enjoys my beers. I made the 1 gallon batch but forgot to scale down the recipe. Needless to say what she got was an insanely bitter 10%ABV beer that even made my toenails curl...fail.

 

[juskojj]

tried to make a irish carbomb stout.... i opened one bottle and it was flat and tasted horrible!!!! i still have the rest bottled and have been sitting for MONTHS just waiting to try another one.... i think my problem is i put the "ingredients" in the bottling bucket and went straight to bottle. so i either should have gone to secondary or just put too much in and killed the yeast..... time will tell! but for right now a huge failure!!

 

[rodwha]

I don't generally go too far off the beaten path, though I do experiment, but my friend does. I turned him on to better brewing from Mr Beer. He now buys MoreBeer kits but still doctors them up. I don't recall what kit he bought, but he bought a pound of peated malt and used it all in his brew. It tasted like bog water!

I keep telling him he ought to open an account here so he can learn something and ask questions before he jumps in head first. Oh well...

 

[Auger]

I wanted to do use cloves in a beer, so I replaced the finishing hops, oz for oz, with cloves. Then, I dry-hopped with more cloves. The beer tasted like a christmas ham. The beer recipe itself tasted solid, but for waaaay too much clove. I kept it around for a few years hoping it would mellow out but finally dumped it.

I also did a honey-lavender pale ale, ended up with far too much lavender. It was like drinking soap.

 

[alane1]

I made a holiday ale a few years back with 2 lbs of crystal 120 and a whole ginger root, I can't even describe how horrible it tasted.

 

[fuzzy2133]

I do not know if this will get any better, just glad I only made 1 gallon. Smoked 9oz of oats with apple pellets and made an oatmeal stout (with all 9oz).

 

[Yoseff]

Tried adding some cold brewed coffee to a stout recipe I was messing around with. Added way too much coffee.

On the good side, though, it came of some use in the woodshop and wound up making some sweet patterns when I soaked wood in it.

 

[PasbitinusBluinusRibbinus]

I made skeeter pee once. Well, I added the ingredients together and then forgot about it. It tasted like straight sulpher and lemons mashed up in a Detroit storm drain.

 

[Brews]

I made a smoked pine nut porter and smoked some of the base grains with the pine nuts for about 3 hrs. After bottle conditioning at about 3 weeks, it was probably one of the best smoked beers I have ever had. About a month later, the flavor disappeared and the smoke came on like a fire. My friend calls it "Smoke Inhalation" and after having one, he went home and his wife asked if we were having a fire in my backyard.