Bad brew

Skoti · Post by **Skoti** » Sunday Feb 12, 2006 5:11 pm

I am now the (un)proud owner of my first bad brew , not due to infection (I'm pretty sure) but of not knowing how to use a product .
I got a NZ style draught kit and bought a Brewcraft beer enhancer .
I read the instructions on the packet and it just said use inplace of dextrose , so I did , just chucked it in the fermenter with the kit and water , didn't boil it or anything .
A while later I was looking at their website and they say to bring it to the boil first , now it didn't say that on the packet and nor did I ask the brewshop operator .
When I mixed it all up it smelt allright , but when I went to bottle and had a sample taste it was foul, it had a very overpowering hop taste but I went ahead and bottled anyway hoping it might be allright after a while .
Three weeks later and I had a try and it tasted the same , absolutly terrible .
Not being one to waste , I mixed it with some store-bought beer in a 1pt bad to 3 pts store bought and it wasn't bad .
My question is could I possibly put some of this bad stuff into a brew when I'm making one up or should I give it to the old man to run through his still .I asked the old man about it and he reckoned the still would be the best bet but he was open to new ideas .
What do you blokes reckon , anyone done this before ?

tyrone · Post by **tyrone** » Sunday Feb 12, 2006 11:39 pm

whack it in the spare cupboard for 3 months and then try as the flavour will probably be brillent then

shane_vor · Post by **shane_vor** » Tuesday Feb 14, 2006 2:34 pm

Hmmm someone wll correct me if I'm wrong...but I read somewhere that over time bitterness decreases and sweetness (I couldn't think of the term I wanted to use) increases. I'd put it away.

Or serve it to visitors you don't particularly care for.

tyrone · Post by **tyrone** » Tuesday Feb 14, 2006 2:57 pm

Thats what happens in my obs.

Skoti · Post by **Skoti** » Tuesday Feb 14, 2006 11:38 pm

Well keeping it for a while wouldn't hurt , storage and bottles aren't a problem , but I wouldn't mind knowing if I could replace this with some of the water when making a brew .

And this is good advice for those sudden friends who pop over now that you make HB , whom normaly you wouldn't piss in their ear if their brain was on fire

shane_vor wrote:Or serve it to visitors you don't particularly care for.

shane_vor · Post by **shane_vor** » Thursday Feb 16, 2006 4:04 pm

you can burn brains????????????????? tops!

Terry · Post by **Terry** » Friday Feb 17, 2006 7:54 am

I must confess that my last brew was a dud. I wasn't paying attention and was constantly distracted while doing an extract brew and ended up putting all of the hops in with the small amount of grain to steep. An hour later I realised what I had done. Now I have a beautiful looking summer wheat beer that tastes like a cold glass of hops tea!

Treat hops with respect my friends.

Skoti · Post by **Skoti** » Tuesday Apr 25, 2006 8:52 am

Update: I just tryed a bottle of this last night and it's not bad after 2 1/2 months in the bottle .
It still is a bit hoppy for my likeing but I reckon another month or two and it'll be a beaut !

The moral of this story is never through away beer that you think is bad

zook37 · Post by **zook37** » Tuesday Apr 25, 2006 4:14 pm

Give it another three months and you will probably be wrapped with it! I had a dark ale that I polished offlast weekend. It didn't come into it's own until it had been in the bottle 14 months. I was fully prepared after that length of time for it to be stuffed, it was bloody beautiful!

Smabb · Post by **Smabb** » Tuesday Apr 25, 2006 7:58 pm

Skoti wrote:Update: I just tryed a bottle of this last night and it's not bad after 2 1/2 months in the bottle .

I had a similar experience about 12 months ago - brewed a truly terrible beer (in fact poured half of my first bottle down the sink in despair) - it was SO bad I thought it was infected

- 6 months later it was bloody beautiful

BeerFrenzy · Post by **BeerFrenzy** » Wednesday Apr 26, 2006 8:25 am

Same experience here... a brew that I nearly tossed out ended up being mothers milk! In fact...Im now finding that the nastier the taste when the beer is young, the better it seems to mature...so yep...whack it in the cupboard for a few months and see how things go

mikey · Post by **mikey** » Thursday Apr 27, 2006 7:48 pm

would that work for the 'beer' I made using bread yeast when the kit yeast didn't work? It's been sitting there for almost a year and I'm still too scared to try it again.

ex0ja · Post by **ex0ja** » Thursday Apr 27, 2006 8:43 pm

zook37 wrote:I had a dark ale that I polished offlast weekend. It didn't come into it's own until it had been in the bottle 14 months. I was fully prepared after that length of time for it to be stuffed, it was bloody beautiful!

That gives me hope, I have a dark ale which is pretty awful. I have been drinking about 1 a week since bottling, just to see if the taste has improved. Most the time I can drink half of it, but then I can't handle any more and tip the rest out. Its been bottled for about 7 weeks now and still tastes pretty bad, I think it is getting better though.

Can't hurt keeping them in the cupboard to see if they get better anyway! I don't mind if I have to store it for a year.

Keleidoscope · Post by **Keleidoscope** » Thursday Apr 27, 2006 8:52 pm

You're suposed to boil what now??

InCider · Post by **InCider** » Saturday Apr 29, 2006 11:51 am

Bad Brews can be tops and tug those strings of regret and sadness...

My first bad brew started exploding ( can of lemonade added and all bottles needed recapping!) and when I first tasted it, the cascade hops gave it a citrus flavour when combined with the lemonade. I left it a few extra weeks and it ended up being as good as my cider.

My 2nd bad brew - the Belle of the Ball, ready for a party last saturday nite was a std coopers cerveza kit. It tasted like bananas and made me look like a monkey. The good side was only 4 tallies got opened before the ridicule made every go to bourbons and mid strength.

I tasted one last night - a week later, and I can feel the real taste is 3-4 weeks away... fingers crossed...

InCider. (Some peanut off Big Brother6 is infringing on my name