First Batch Horror stories

my first was over a decade ago, and it was good enough to pour on salad as dressing! oh so vinegarry!

i think its because of stale malt, or at least that's what i've been told.

what's wrong with your beer? it may just need aging.

My first batch was a bit of a nightmare.

Since I didn't know what I was really doing, after 4 days I moved from primary to secondary. Unfortunately the fermenting hadn't completed!

Sat in my keg for a couple of days, I noticed it was starting to leak. First thing I did was tighten the tap (this is where the leak was coming from!) This seemed to fix it.

About a week later, the leaking began again. This time, when I tried to fix the tap the leak got worse and started to spray every where! The result was for me to rush out and buy a new keg which I transferred everything over to.

The end result was great tasting beer, but it was weak tasting!

From here, I started my next batch. Being rather stupid, after leaving the beer to complete fermenting in primary, I moved it over to my original keg for secondary. I thought it would be okay... Nope! After only a day the leak was noticed again so I had to rush out. This time I bought bottles (can't go wrong here!)

Third time... Well I threw away the original keg! Now, I am just worried that the fermenting was a little quick but some replies here have made me worry a little less :D

I know a guy whose first 3 batches were all mysteriously horrible. But he had been able to made decent kit wines. At one point I asked him how he got his siphon started. He did it by sucking directly on the tube. I told him to stop doing that and then he had his first successful batch. Wine has enough alcahol to handle such abuse, but not most beers.

You didn't suck your siphon hose, did you?

Jeff Sechelt, B.C.

watery and very malty tasting.

It fermented to 1.014, slightly higher than the 1.009 advertised, from

1.033, slightly lower than 1.039 =/- .003 expected. But I know I put too much water in, and the kit was old.

The dried malt was a brick, and the canned malt was from a bulged can, which can't be a good sign.

But I figured I'd make this the milk run, and learn my mistakes on this batch. I guess I have.

I'll stack it under the house where its cool for a month or so, and we'll see how it looks then.

Meanwhile, I'm ready to tackle an Irish Red. Jeff N. Cantwell Downtown Little Rock

NRA, ARPA, Libertarian '86, '91 300zx 2+2

No, filled it with beer after sanitizing and rinsing.

I've been very cautious about keep everyth>I know a guy whose first 3 batches were all mysteriously horrible.

Jeff N. Cantwell Downtown Little Rock

NRA, ARPA, Libertarian '86, '91 300zx 2+2

Damn right, it was a kit!

To be honest, my first brews were quite good (considering) as they were very simple - a couple of tins of LME and some hops.

By and by, me and my brewing pal, got more adventurous (and drunk). We made the error of sampling our last batch and planning the next at the same time. This led to a committee-designed beer. I had it in mind to try for something like Deuchars IPA. The wheat set my friend off all continental and he decided that my pot of Schwartz coriander seed would work well. He also happened to have a handful of black cardamom seed about his person. From my brew-cupboard we came up with this:

3kg Pale LME 240g Crystal 300g Malted Wheat 900g honey

Boil:

3oz Fuggles

Late:

2oz Kent Goldings 0.5 oz coriander seeds 1oz sha ren 1 tsp irish moss

Steep:

1oz Kent Goldings

Wyeast British Ale yeast.

Recipator puts OG at 1.055 and I measured FG at 1.012

I won't attempt to justify any of that at all.

Anyway several days later, it started to smell. It didn't smell exactly bad, just not like beer. It smelled like nothing else so much as Vicks Vaporub, which I think is eucalyptus and wintergreen. I gave it a taste while checking its gravity and it was dreadful. Very perfumy.

Only two things kept me from pouring it away. Firstly, I wanted my co-conspirator to see what he had done and secondly, I was I'll that week and I thought the fever might be affecting my sense of smell.

My friend was in Thailand for a couple of weeks, so it was in the keg for a fortnight before he tasted it. He was surprised at my misgivings and pronounced it to be a pleasant - if rather over-hopped - beery beer. My wife turned up her nose, saying it tasted too medicinal.

I still wasn't sure, but over the next couple of weeks, it began to grow on me. It never really tasted like beer, being not only challengingly bitter, but also contriving to be too sweet. It reminded me strongly of a pint of bitter topped off with lime cordial. Or a shandy.

By the time I finished it, I had quite grown to like it, though I don't believe I shall be trying to replicate it!

I also think that our rehmannia Imperial Stout was an adjunct too far, but that's a tale for another day.

My first batch was a Brewer's Best red ale kit. End result was very cidery....stale extract. It was a John Bull extract BTW so be warned. It was also slightly thin from what I recall. Also I made the mistake of dipping my racking cane too far into the fermentor bucket (only did a single fermentation) and siphoned quite a bit of trub into the bottling bucket. This proceeded to make it way into many bottles of beer. Also forgot to attach the racking cane tip that would have filtered a lot of this.

I've since learned my lesson and went with Listermann as they seem to have extremely fresh extract, reasonable prices, and they're only an hour away.....plus free shipping on orders $35 and above. So far my porter kit tastes great, and it's on it's third day of fermenting.

My first batch wasn't that great. It was too sweet when it was supposed to be finished, and did not carbonate properly in the bottles. I put this down to a lack of aeration (cos I didn't aerate at all!) and a lack of sugar in the bottles when conditioning. I used a 3/4 cup bag of sugar and then measured it out into a cup. It seemed that I had too much sugar and so I didn't use it all. I found out afterwards that sugar can compact quite a lot and so I should have just used it all.

With the next batch I was obsessive about aeration and used the whole bag of sugar. Came out a million times better!

Recently I just brewed an extract Kolsch. Came out cidery, which I put down to old Wheat extract. I cold conditioned and dumped some hops in the keg. Now it tastes fine. :)

It looks like your ingredients were old. You were brewing a very low gravity beer and so I find it hard to imagine that it could come out THAT BAD even if it were too young. When others talk of having to seriously age beers, I tend to see that they're going higher gravity or more complex beers. I would think that a low gravity beer should be relatively drinkable a few weeks after pitching the yeast.

Same here. Got a freebie Goldrush pale ale from brew store that was only 4 weeks off it's expiry date. Had been doing fruit wines up til then. As I had a 30l wine primary and I notices the enticing message on the label saying to use malt instead of sugar if 'maximising your bucket capacity', I added

1.5kg of blond malt (instead of 1kg) and topped to 20l.

As I write, it has been bottled about 3 weeks and still tastes malty and watery. It is definitely not pale with a draught beer colour instead of golden. I read somewhere that malt goes dark with age so I expect that's the cause. It has no head but is drinkable if there's nothing else.

2nd kit was a fresh Coopers Lager. I only filled to 23l this time. This baby has come out really well. It actually tasted quite nice straight out of the primary and has been bottled about a week now. 3rd beer is a ginger beer usingthe trub from the 2nd kit and a little cider yeast. Used about 1kg of ginger root minced in the food processor. It's been bubbling about 3 days. Taste tested it last night and it got the thumbs up from SWMBO. :-)

Next will be a Coopers Dark Ale. Then will use the trub for another ginger beer to see how it differs from the 1st.

Mike

your bucket capacity', I added

oops, was 30l, not 20...

I got a dandy.

My first AG batch. Decided to jump in with an imperial stout.

I guestimated the infusion water temp for the cooler. I think that in retrospect, it was OK, but I slapped the lid on for fear of heat loss. In five minutes, my wife needed me to go pick her up. I foolishly leave the cooler for nearly an hour. I get back and read the temp at 165. The heat just centralized and made a dextrin mess. Committed for the haul, I pitched the yeast and it fermented for a little bit.

Incredibly difficult to drink that batch.

But I did.

I hate to rain on the parade, but I have been brewing for a little over a year now, about 20 batches or so, and haven't had a bad one yet. I haven't used any "tinned" kits. I have been using extract/grain "kits", even did a few that I made with "recipes" that I've read from newsgroups, books, and magazines, with a few changes. About the only "problems" I've had have been longer "conditioning" times for proper carbonation. I'm sure somewhere along the line I will have a "X" batch horror story, but nothing so far. Just keep trying, for the most part it can only get better. :)

Michael Herrenbruck Drag> Don't make me feel alone here. Surely someone else has had a horrible > first batch?

A friend left his brew in secondary for about six months, I think the airlock dried out at least once, he was a bit vague about that - we eventually tried to bottle it, but once the lid came off it smelled STRONGLY of acetone, I kid you not. Killed some plants that he poured it on too.

rb

heh, my first batch was jumping head first into all-grain. I tossed 2lbs of

2-row into about 2 gallons of water, turned the burner on high, tossed in some hops when it was boiling waited an hour, tossed in more hops, strained off what was left of the grain & hops (heh) into a primary bucket (1 gallon batch) waited a week & put it into (dumped it into) a gallon jug & waited another week.

It was god aweful...it smelled & tasted like skunks ass, or at least what i'm fairly certain to be the smell & flavor of a skunks ass. It looked horrible too, bits of grain husk, hops, break, trub and whatever else was in there (yikes), it was this aweful poo brownish-green color.

Although I will admit I have stuck with all-grain & only bought & made 2 kits because they were on sale & the shop owner (now one of my best friends) gave me a great deal on them.

Aside from stuck wheat sparges (see my other posting), I've turned out some pretty sweet batches since that first fateful batch. I have come a long way since then.

You guys have some great stories!! The best thing is we've all been there!!!

Kent

Parsnips mate I read somewhere that you could replace hops with parsnips in beer making. My god, it was murkey while liquid that became more foul as the beer aged. Rather than adding bitterness, it was very sour.

Mind you, the beer was perfect for bludgers that would not take no for an answer!

Cheers

I went to my (then) LHBS and picked up the goodies for a pale ale. LME, pellet hops, burton water salts in a little packet, dry yeast and sdium metabisulphate in a little packet for mixing with water and sanitizing.

As it turns out, the little packet containing burton water salts and the little packet containing the sanitizer looked very similar....

Poured the whole thing out before even pitching the yeast.

Jeff N. Cantwell Downtown Little Rock

NRA, ARPA, Libertarian '86, '91 300zx 2+2

That's too bad... I'm assuming you added the metabisulfite to your sparge water, or in the kettle before the boil? The boiling action would have driven off the SO2 and there would have been no ill effects. You could have pitched the yeast...

Scott

That'd be a "double doh!", then?

Mike