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 ****!! 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.