trying to save a bad but non infected beer

[ArcLight]

I made a beer and ended up with too much water (6 gallons instead of 50 I added 4 ounces of malto dextrine, to try and add some body. The recipe called for Hazelnut extract. I don't remember the brand of the extract but after aging for a few months, the extract taste is way way too strong and the beer is pretty bad - not infected - just tastes like crap.

Instead of dumping the remaining 5 gallons, I was thinking of pouring all the bottles back into a fermentor, and adding some honey (12-16 ounces) and sugar (6-16 ounces). While that will thin out the beer, it will help raise the alcohol level a bit, and hopefully get rid of some of the hazelnut taste because of the fermentation.
I will also add another 4 ounces of malto dextrine to counter the further thinning due to additional alcohol.

Any comments?

(The only alternative is to let it sit for many additional months and hope the hazelnut flavor fades, but even so, the beer has too much water so I don't think it will ever be good as it is.)

 

[homebrewdad]

The extract flavor may fade with time, but fermentation won't fix it. Yeast eat sugars, not flavor extracts, so that won't change.

Dumping the bottles back into a fermenter is pretty much assuring oxidation. So on top of the current issues, you'll add wet cardboard taste. Yum!

It sounds to me like this is a lost cause. Maybe save a few in the back of the closet for another six months or so, but if it's too watery, anyway... not sure that there's anything to be done.

 

[bleme]

+1

How do you feel about beer bread? Hazelnut beer bread sounds like it might work....

Even if beer isn't drinkable, there are tons of uses for it.

 

[bleme]

And for the future, any time a recipe has a flavor extract, I only use half of it the first time.

If you really want to fine tune it to your taste, pull 3 samples in 2oz glasses. Put 1 drop of extract in the first, 2 in the second, and 3 in the third. Decide which flavor profile suits you best and scale up for the rest of the batch.

 

[progmac]

dump it and move on