[braufessor]

True story. Use obviously different pans if you are going to cook weenies while bottling

Best homebrew story ever. Hands down.

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Yes.  This^^^^^^   Awesome... in a horrible, horrible way....

I dump batches I don't like... no big deal.  The worst batch?  Hard to say for sure.  I am positive I had some horrible infected/chlorophenol bombs back when I started 17+ years ago.... blocked those out at this point. My worst batch in the last 5 years was a spiced pumkin ale.... held out hope on it for about 2 years before finally opening 40-50 bottles and dumping them down the drain.

[majorvices]

I have dumped a lot of beer. Most of the times it was perfectly good beer that I was just making room for something else I was more excited for. But there are times I've either just not liked a beer via recipe flaws or experimental flaws that otherwise were perfectly fine but that I had no desire to drink. There have also been a few off infections and some fruit fly infection via hot, humid southern summers and pervasive fruit flies.

I own a commercial brewery now and am more anal than ever but I am proud to say I have not had to dump a batch is a long, long time. Now let me go find some wood to knock on. Nothing is worse than dumping $10k of beer down the drain over a stupid mistake. Let's not ever talk about the exploding bottle recall. OMG that was a nightmare.

[HoosierBrew]

True story. Use obviously different pans if you are going to cook weenies while bottling

Best homebrew story ever. Hands down.

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Wait, that is true ?  I thought it was BS all this time. Well I hope they were at least good all beef franks   
Yeah, greatest homebrew story ever !

[reverseapachemaster]

I've dumped a few. Simple early homebrewing errors early on mixed with a few experiments gone wrong. The worst was my first attempt at water adjustment. I left the digital scale set to ounces and ended up with a beer that way entirely too minerally. It fermented out but it tasted way too salty to drink. I used most of the batch for cooking and dumped a few bottles. I found a couple bottles about a year ago. The bottles were probably two years old. Opened them up and it smelled and tasted like the liquid in cans of black olives. Needless to say, that is a mistake I have never made again.

I have a batch of sour beer that has been a problem in every sense. It is acetic as heck and the flavor isn't great but I think I'm going to hold on to the batch and use it for blending.

[denny]

I have dumped a lot of beer. Most of the times it was perfectly good beer that I was just making room for something else I was more excited for. But there are times I've either just not liked a beer via recipe flaws or experimental flaws that otherwise were perfectly fine but that I had no desire to drink. There have also been a few off infections and some fruit fly infection via hot, humid southern summers and pervasive fruit flies.

I own a commercial brewery now and am more anal than ever but I am proud to say I have not had to dump a batch is a long, long time. Now let me go find some wood to knock on. Nothing is worse than dumping $10k of beer down the drain over a stupid mistake. Let's not ever talk about the exploding bottle recall. OMG that was a nightmare.

The first rule of the exploding bottle recall is not to talk about the exploding bottle recall....

[factory]

I have never dumped a batch, but like many folks, I've had a couple of disappointments.  One of them was my first lager.  The yeast I used was Saflager S-23.  It threw off the worst sulfer smell ever!  I waited and waited hoping that it would disappear with age.  Needles to say, it never did.  Called that one Ass-Gas Smoked Lager.  One of my friends loved it (after he got past the smell).  Had a Cream Ale that was pure diacetyl.  Tasted like I was eating a stick of butter.  Never dumped either batch because friends drank them.

[beersk]

I dumped a lot last year in tracking down an infection. I've got it figured out and now I've brewed a lot of fantastic beer this year. I narrowed down one of my issues to my racking cane. I've since gone to fermenting in kegs and doing a closed transfer to the serving keg. This allows me to clean my jumper hose with BLC and get it nice and clean. Whereas, with my racking cane and tubing, I just rinsed out after use. Now I feel much more comfortable with my process and am brewing solid beer. Before that was contamination from co2 lines from a beer backing up into the lines causing mold to grow and giving me butterscotch beers. Ugh. That was a rough time figuring that out...dumped a lot of beer.

On to better days...

[Wheat_Brewer]

I've never had a batch I've dumped but I have made some experimental beers such as a watermelon wit that came out fine...but 5 gallons of it is way way way too much.

I did take a few beers back from a buddy I gave a bunch of bottles to. He claimed they kept exploding but the ones I kept and the ones I took back are perfectly carbonated. He's off the list of beer receiptients for being a drama queen.

[Stevie]

I narrowed down one of my issues to my racking cane.

Cleaning racking canes and tubing sucks. I currently rinse with hot water and then clean the next time I have a bucket of cleaner (brew day, bottle cleaning day, cleaning day day).


I recently started using a window box liner for cleaning long parts like racking canes, dip tubes, and my mix stir. They come in all sorts of lengths and are much sturdier than the wall paper trays I've seen others use.

[brick pig]

I agree with everyone else: the hot dog water story is awesome. Coolest sad story I've ever read.

@factory: I've never had great luck with lagers. They're always perfectly drinkable, but they've never measured up to my ales. I simply don't have the resources to keep them at a constant-enough cool temp to be really successful.

I think my luck with not having had any batches go so wrong as to need dumping stems from two pretty obvious factors: 1- Since I began brewing, I've always lived in places with decent water, so I very, very rarely do any treatment, and 2- I am absolutely maniacal about sanitizing my equipment, before, during, and even after, every brew and every bottling.

I also very rarely take readings, so most of the time I'm not opening my fermenters at all except to rack or bottle. (I'm only brewing for my own drinking, so I'm not much concerned with my ABV and whatnot. Sometimes if I'm trying something I've never done before, I'll keep a closer eye on things, but not often.)

Or, maybe the odds have just been stacking up against me all these years, and I'm coming due for a run of disappointments. Yikes.

[euge]

I've dumped a few for being infected or contaminated. If it is just poor choice of ingredients or bad brewing then I get to suffer reminded of my mistake with every sip.

[Herminator]

Only had to dump one batch so far.  It was actually rather recent.  IPA that was so oxidized that is all I could taste.  Bummer was that I spent roughly $40 on hops just for this one batch.  Oh well.  To be honest...I am intrigued what a quad with hotdogs tastes like.  ha.  Cheers!


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[udubdawg]

I've never made undrinkably bad beer, but have had a few fizzy bug infections and a couple batches of apple cider vinegar.  Although after Gary Awdey's talk I'm scared to death discovering mousiness in my cider.   

worst mistake was probably at the end of an incredibly long double brew day, pitching the belgian yeast onto the dunkelweizen and the weizen yeast onto the patersbier.  beers turned out OK good, but all that work to end up with something different than I aimed at was pretty deflating at the time.

[pete b]

Bad karma for not pan frying or grilling hot dogs. No one but no one boils a hot dog...
I once put on my beekeeping suit and safety googles to one by one open about 30 bottle bombs and pour them back into the bottling buckets. Only thing that ever went down the drain was a carboy of mead that spent an unknown amount of time in the cellar with a dried out airlock. Plenty of not quite right beers but nothing horrible. The best wit I made I'm quite certain had an infection that gave it a nice sour/funk.

[tomsawyer]

Back in the late 90's I used to love watching my extract batches ferment, so I'd keep them in the kitchen.  Warmest room in the house.  For some reason every thrid or fourth batch would be too fruity nasty to drink.  Eventually I read about the importance of fermentation temperatures and realized my error.  I pass that on to everyone who'll listen now.