Burned Beer

[upNYbrew]

Well, I'm faced with the awful question "to dump or not to dump"...

I suffered a catastrophic e-kettle meltdown last week brewing up a Rye Saison (see this thread for details - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/bizzare-e-kettle-malfunction-meltdown-393802/)

I tasted the beer for the first time today (one week post brew) and it most definitely has a strong burned taste and aroma. The problem is, I suspect this beer would be amazing without the burned taste (or even if it was just less prominent... smoked saison!).

Anyone run into a burned taste situation before? What did you do?

It will break my heart to dump this... but if its garbage I can avoid wasting time bottling and free up a fermenter to brew more ASAP!

 

[steven]

If you have the means to keep it, by all means keep it. You will never know how it would have turned out if you toss it now... if you keep it, the flavors may mellow with time and you'll have an interesting brew. If it still tastes burnt in a few weeks, then toss it. At least you will know it turned out bad then.

 

[upNYbrew]

Its a tough call... the burned taste is pretty strong now but I am wondering if it will fade like the smoke in smoked beers does

 

[unionrdr]

I had a similar situation with my Hopped & Confusedv2 I brewed on Fat Tuesday. Drank most of a 5th of vodka & two 24oz Labatt's blues & passed out after the bittering addition. When wife finally roused me,it was at least 90 minutes into the 60 minute boil. I was sure it was ruined. I rued the day the two week 1st FG sample mark came along. Turned into 15 days,yesterday when I took a sample. Light colored but cloudy with WL029 yeast. check,whew. Nice smell of malt/hops,check,whew again.
FG1.016 out of OG1.046 so far,ok...whew again. Taste was young & green,but a certain crispness between the yeast & hop profile. Wheeeeew! Dodged a bullit so far. Clever these Germans & their yeasts,hops,& malts. They worked together to make sure my mistake wasn't remembered by the beer. Beer is like wine in this respect.
I think the burnt flavor may mellow a little bit. But not that much if it were fairly prominent flavor-wise. Package it & give it 4-5 weeks before fridge a few for 2 weeks. These two things will help the yeast clean up & settle out some of it.

 

[IffyG]

Anyone run into a burned taste situation before? What did you do?

I scorched a grain bag on the bottom of my brew pot making a dry irish stout. It tasted burnt going into the fermenter, going into the keg and it didn't fade at all in the 2 months I gave it in the keg. I doubt mine was going to improve. My opinion is to dump it and try again.