A Bad Beer Thread

[Stephen Tashiro]

It's easy to think of beers that I like, but, thinking about beers that I don't like, there are many..

Beers that I don't want to drink:

There's Panda beer, the sweet (yeech!) beer from China.
There are all sorts of Belgian beers that have fruit flavors in them.t
There is the horrible Shiner beer that has the "hint of red grapefruit" in it.

Beers that I wouldn't refuse to drink, but don't buy:

The wheat based beers.
The beer that comes in a bottle that looks like a Red Strip Ale bottle, but it isn't Red Stripe Ale. It's ofen on sale cheap.
Pasteurized-for-export versions of Guinness.

[David Helm]

My small town has five microbreweries. I essentially only drink beers from them. Currently my favorite is IPA, but I also love stouts, and scotch ales and bitters. Can't abide any of the national beer brands with artificial carbonation.

[Jason Roehl]

Of all the beers I've drunk over the years (and it's been many), I've had exactly one that I couldn't finish because it was just awful. It was a blueberry beer.

For a long time, I was a beer snob--I wouldn't touch any of the big-batch U.S. beers, especially the Light/Lite versions. But, I have a couple friends who only drink those things for the most part, so if I'm hanging out with them and there's nothing darker available, I'll drink their canned water.

FYI, David, even microbrews are usually "artificially carbonated", unless they're cask-conditioned, which means they're aged in a sealed barrel with no airlock. Most beer that's produced is fermented in tanks that allow the carbon dioxide to vent, then when it's kegged, the headspace is pressurized with carbon dioxide gas. It's not the carbonation that makes mass-produced U.S. beers low quality, it's all the adjuncts--rice, gelatin and the like to clarify it or boost the alcohol content without raising the calorie count.

[Judson Green]

Yep those blueberry beer are just plain awful. Generally I don't care much for any flavored beers, haven't drunk a coriander flavored beer in a while either like Blue Moon.

Had a smoked beer (I think the hops or wort was smoke dried) that while being a interesting and complex beer was not IMO a drinking beer, I shared the 16oz bottle and didn't go back for more.

Edit: And coffee beers. What's up with that? Is it for drinking in the morning? A hair of the dog thing?

[Shawn Pixley]

Beers i tried and will not drink:

Pyramid Scotch Ale
Hair of the Dog (incredibly strong)
any big brand American Lager
most IPA's (I just don't like the style)
Russian Ales

what I do like:

Northern English Brown ales (preferably Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale)
Irish Ales
Trappist Ales
Wit's
German or Czech Pilsners
Martzen's
Guinness!!!!!!
Boddingtons
Fullers
Bass
Dark english porters
Japanese Lagers (Kirin)
many styles of the microbrew genre
I could go on...

I've been homebrewing since 1984. I can do other styles, but usually make a Czech Lager, a Stout, a Wit, and a Northern english Brown Ale. All whole grain.

[Jason Roehl]

Shawn, you just need the right gateway IPA. I used to dislike IPAs as well, but then I had just the right one...now I'll drink just about any.

I will say that I don't care for the bourbon-barrel aged beers. I like bourbon, but the two together just doesn't do it for me.

I'm real close to making the jump to all-grain brewing, and I'll probably just do the brew-in-a-bag method, at least to start. Been doing kits for 10+ years, but have started to do more since I installed a dual-tap kegerator almost 2 years ago and ditched bottling. I hated bottling (specifically, washing and sanitizing the bottles), so I didn't brew much.

[Shawn Pixley]

I'm real close to making the jump to all-grain brewing, and I'll probably just do the brew-in-a-bag method, at least to start. Been doing kits for 10+ years, but have started to do more since I installed a dual-tap kegerator almost 2 years ago and ditched bottling. I hated bottling (specifically, washing and sanitizing the bottles), so I didn't brew much.

Jason,

Stop with the kits and bags!!! Even if you stay with Malt extract, you can make far better beer on your own with a simple grain bill added to the extract in the wort. I hope you are keeping a good log of what you make. PM me and I'll send off some recipes if you like.

[Jason Roehl]

Yep those blueberry beer are just plain awful. Generally I don't care much for any flavored beers, haven't drunk a coriander flavored beer in a while either like Blue Moon.

Had a smoked beer (I think the hops or wort was smoke dried) that while being a interesting and complex beer was not IMO a drinking beer, I shared the 16oz bottle and didn't go back for more.

Edit: And coffee beers. What's up with that? Is it for drinking in the morning? A hair of the dog thing?

Coffee goes very well with dark beers--some dark beers even have hints of a coffee flavor without any added, which is how I suspect the practice started. In fact, just yesterday I added some freshly ground coffee to a dark porter I was brewing.

Jason,

Stop with the kits and bags!!! Even if you stay with Malt extract, you can make far better beer on your own with a simple grain bill added to the extract in the wort. I hope you are keeping a good log of what you make. PM me and I'll send off some recipes if you like.

Shawn, I think you're a bit confused on the terms. The kits I've been using come with unhopped Liquid Malt Extract and typically a pound or two of crushed grains, then a few ounces of hops. Heat water, steep the grains, dissolve the LME, boil, add hops, boil, add more hops, cool, pitch the yeast, etc. I'm wanting to switch to all grain, using the brew-in-a-bag method, which skips the sparging/mash tun setup, and uses a nylon mesh bag for the grains. I have a friend who swears by the method. Google it. The BIAB method will keep me alive, since I just ordered a new, heavy-duty, 10-gallon brew pot last night (~$175). I don't think I could get the rest of a sparging setup past my wife at this point and live to tell about it.

[Ryan Mooney]

The general dislike of fruit beers is interesting but somewhat unsurprising. There are a lot of really horrible ones out there, I would however encourage folks to keep an open mind on them though. There seem to be more that are actually good nowadays than used to be (lindemans notwithsanding although thier Cuvee Rene Grande Cru is acceptable). As with most things its a sense of balance and appropriateness of amount that makes them work or not. This is true of most of the additives, the product should be enhanced by (smoke, bourbon, etc...) not overwhelmed by it.

Worst beer I ever had was at a sour beer tasting (again like many "styles" sours can be amazingly good or really horrid) and one has enterobacter contamination. That is NOT a flavor you will soon forget (and I've tasted some small amounts in several other beers since now that my taste buds are "sensitized" - enterobacter adds "acetaldehyde, methyl acetate, diacetyl, 2,3-pentanedione and dimethyl sulphide" in various amounts and the flavor profile can be best described as a woody poo like flavor).

Second worst was a cream ale that would have been more accurately described as a "creamed corn ale" the amount of DMS in that beer was overwhelming.

The kits I've been using come with unhopped Liquid Malt Extract and typically a pound or two of crushed grains, then a few ounces of hops. Heat water, steep the grains, dissolve the LME, boil, add hops, boil, add more hops, cool, pitch the yeast, etc. I'm wanting to switch to all grain, using the brew-in-a-bag method, which skips the sparging/mash tun setup, and uses a nylon mesh bag for the grains. I have a friend who swears by the method. Google it. The BIAB method will keep me alive, since I just ordered a new, heavy-duty, 10-gallon brew pot last night (~$175). I don't think I could get the rest of a sparging setup past my wife at this point and live to tell about it.

BIAB works pretty well, you'll get slightly lower extract efficiency than some other methods but at homebrew scale it doesn't matter much. My biggest dislike of it is that its somewhat messier than a mash tun setup (I've been using the 2 gott coolers and a brewpot for ~12 years or so, about 5 I added another hot water heater which allowed me to overlap brews and do 2 all grain batches in about 4 hours.)

7% or 8% is okay, much above that and I do start to feel like it is too "boozy" (very good word for that, now I'll know what to tell my friends that try to give me the strong stuff).

Some of my friends make beer in the 10%+ range that's not boozy at all.. and that's a very risky situation indeed!

[Shawn Pixley]

Shawn, I think you're a bit confused on the terms. The kits I've been using come with unhopped Liquid Malt Extract and typically a pound or two of crushed grains, then a few ounces of hops. Heat water, steep the grains, dissolve the LME, boil, add hops, boil, add more hops, cool, pitch the yeast, etc. I'm wanting to switch to all grain, using the brew-in-a-bag method, which skips the sparging/mash tun setup, and uses a nylon mesh bag for the grains. I have a friend who swears by the method. Google it. The BIAB method will keep me alive, since I just ordered a new, heavy-duty, 10-gallon brew pot last night (~$175). I don't think I could get the rest of a sparging setup past my wife at this point and live to tell about it.

No, I wasn't confused. The kit you were using was exactly what I thought. The problem with kits as I see it, you get stale grains, hops, and yeast. But at least it's not a good selection If the fresh hops, pellets (I don't care for them, I use fresh leaf hops), and yeasts aren't kept cold, they rapidly deteriorate. Admittedly, I haven't seen many kits. But I am usually asked to coach a newbies' brew when they start down the hybrid / extract process.

I am glad you are moving on. Your approach with the grain bag will work. However, you really don't have good control of the temperature. Ultimately, you'll want that. But I did the bag (Grain Bags, not the brew bags - gag) for some time before going all grain. You can make excellent beer this way but it is harder to be consistent. Consistently good. A slow controlled sparge does make a difference. I hope you have a tap / fitting on the 10 gallon pot to move the liquids. Lifting and moving 80 lbs of hot water gets dicey.

There are four things to think about when making consistent, good beer: Ingredient quality, Sanitation, Record-keeping and Precision. When you sparge an all grain batch, depending upon the freshness and types of the malt and the grind (I try to use within 24 hrs of the grind), the precision of the mash / sparging water will ensure the Maltose is converted by the enzymes to the sugar distribution you are looking for. This can have a marked effect in the beer (when you get it right that is). Depending upon the sugars and the yeast, having control of these can help you to produce the right esters and fusel alcohols in the right proportions. The esters are an incredibly small volume / proportion, yet they are what drive the beers taste profile. As you proceed to become an excellent brewer you may find yourself forced to focus on the Biochemistry. Good beer - control and balance of the esters. Good luck! You are on the right track! Making alcohol is easy, making consistent, good beer is hard.

[Ryan Mooney]

Shaun, IMHO you're being unduly harsh on both kits and BIAB. You aren't wrong on what matters but I think you might be biased by remembrance of sad days past. This is similar to some of the antipathy I see towards dry yeast, yes some (OK most/all) of the dry yeast used to be horrid, but some of the modern stuff is darn good, cheaper than the slurries and actually had a higher cell count. You just have to choose wisely.

Some of the newer kits are actually pretty good.. They're freshly made on demand and shipped out pretty quickly. Better than that dubious can/jar of LME that has been sitting on the shelf for good knows how long anyway (and the cans omg the cans no!!). However they certainly are not a good value proposition as you can buy the individual ingredients somewhat cheaper and even better if you can stock up at all. I wouldn't stock up on LME of course but I do on vacuum sealed DME, it's somewhat cheaper by the 50lb bag and lasts quite well vacuum sealed.

I usually have 100-200 lbs of various base grains and about that much adjunct in stock and keep 5-10lbs of hops in vacuum seal bags in the freezer. Usually buy DME in 50lb sacks and vacuum seal it in 5lb bags for extra O.G. for strong beers or yeast starters. Gamma seal lids are really my best friend.

As far as BIAB, once you've figured the heat loss of your base system you should be able to hit mash temperature just as accurately with the BIAB as you can with any other setup. If you're chasing mash temps you need to sit back and get more comfortable with your calculator and get your strike water temp under control. Mash temp is a pretty easy base temperature/lb/qt with the system loss added in. For BIAB your system loss should be more predictable than with a separate mash tun even as you've already heated the vessel the mash is going into. Remember the profile of the wort is largely set in the first 15m.

Personally I'd work on fermentation temp control next before I got overly stressed about the BIAG issues, unless you decide you just don't like the system for other reasons (which is what I found after a couple of trys long ago).

[Shawn Pixley]

Shaun, IMHO you're being unduly harsh on both kits and BIAB. You aren't wrong on what matters but I think you might be biased by remembrance of sad days past.

I've been brewing since 1984 and win awards to this day. Did anyone ask you to be the brewmaster for a brew pub? (Admittedly I didn't think I was ready for that scale and made a better living doing architecture). I didn't say you couldn't make good beers from grain bags or extract / grain mixes. I did and still can. Others can and do as well. But the limitations of stale or limited choices in a kit is just that, a limitation. You can taste the differences in using say Cascade hops vs say Goldings as the bittering hops even if you get the same IBU's. Most of the new material forms of ingredients like pelleted hops are to address different issues such as convenience or shelf life (not taste). Pellets don't taste as good but are definitely more convenient. With greater exposure to air in pelletizing, some taste is lost. Leaf hops taste better but are much more sensitive to heat and oxygen exposure. They should be refrigerated at all times. Filtering out the various residue from the grain, hops and proteins is not fun and most homebrewers aren't particularly good at it. It shows in the lack of clarity of their beers. For styles such as a Wit, the lack of clarity gets them poor marks in competition. Many home brewers introduce oxygen after fermentation which can create skunky esters in the beer. Dry hopping with pellets is just wrong.

Additionally, If you start with dry yeast you have a much more limited selection of yeasts. Dry yeasts are more shelf-life friendly and they are selected for that attribute, not taste. Moreover, most do not prepare dry yeast properly and end up under-inoculating the wort with yeast. This often produces unpleasant esters. You will taste it in the finished beer.

My point on the bags is that the water temperature in the center of the bag will not be the same as that of the water outside of the bag. This is especially true when you get beyond five gallon batches. Additionally, you are extracting more of the sugars from some grains but not others in the bag, leaching more proteins out that later have to be removed. If / when you swish the bag around (which I have seen many a homebrewer do), your water temperature changes due to exposure to the air. When this happens the enzymes do not produce the sugar profile you are seeking. The enzymes on the crushed (not chopped) malted barley are very temperature sensitive with a range of +/- 2 degrees F between activating different enzymes. One of the results of this lack of temperature control is inconsistency from batch to batch. I have done that in the past and then experienced the differences from batch to batch on the same recipe. When you do things right, and with precision, you gain control of a complicated, multi-variable system.

I am not promoting that people shouldn't home brew, but only that there are ways to enhance the qualities of your brew. There is a step up in the the quality of your brewing process when you go all grain with a proper mash / sparge setup. Getting the mix of sugars that will ferment or non-ferment materially changes the flavor profile. Contrary to other all-grain home brewers, I tend to use more or completely specialty grains rather than simple sugaring grains (2 row or 6 row plain barley). It is more expensive, but I think one can taste the difference. It really isn't that difficult to buy / build a proper sparge set-up for 5-6 gallon batches. Most all the materials store inside the larger vessels. Admittedly, I tend to value high precision in most things. I am also largely a neander in woodworking and I think that extends to brewing. Making alcohol is easy, making "beer" is somewhat hard, making good beer is hard, and making consistent good beer is harder still. But it ultimately is the goal. I offer my advice freely. No one has to take it.

As to the kits, having watched them being assembled at various places, I'll stand by my opinion.

[Mel Fulks]

Shawn and Ryan have given us a civil and interesting exchange on brewing. Next time I taste a beer I don't like I will take
comfort in knowing it was a lot of trouble to someone.

[John Coloccia]

FWIW, I hate fruity drinks myself...despise them. That said, I really don't mind a nice blueberry ale from Maine. It's not anything I'd ever seek out and buy, or even anything I'd ever order at a bar, but if I find one in a cooler at a BBQ when I'm up in New Hampshire, I'll surely try one. It's one of those unexpected flavors that really go well together, IMHO.

[Tim Morton]

I've been brewing since 1984 and win awards to this day. Did anyone ask you to be the brewmaster for a brew pub? (Admittedly I didn't think I was ready for that scale and made a better living doing architecture). I didn't say you couldn't make good beers from grain bags or extract / grain mixes. I did and still can. Others can and do as well. But the limitations of stale or limited choices in a kit is just that, a limitation. You can taste the differences in using say Cascade hops vs say Goldings as the bittering hops even if you get the same IBU's. Most of the new material forms of ingredients like pelleted hops are to address different issues such as convenience or shelf life (not taste). Pellets don't taste as good but are definitely more convenient. With greater exposure to air in pelletizing, some taste is lost. Leaf hops taste better but are much more sensitive to heat and oxygen exposure. They should be refrigerated at all times. Filtering out the various residue from the grain, hops and proteins is not fun and most homebrewers aren't particularly good at it. It shows in the lack of clarity of their beers. For styles such as a Wit, the lack of clarity gets them poor marks in competition. Many home brewers introduce oxygen after fermentation which can create skunky esters in the beer. Dry hopping with pellets is just wrong.

Additionally, If you start with dry yeast you have a much more limited selection of yeasts. Dry yeasts are more shelf-life friendly and they are selected for that attribute, not taste. Moreover, most do not prepare dry yeast properly and end up under-inoculating the wort with yeast. This often produces unpleasant esters. You will taste it in the finished beer.

My point on the bags is that the water temperature in the center of the bag will not be the same as that of the water outside of the bag. This is especially true when you get beyond five gallon batches. Additionally, you are extracting more of the sugars from some grains but not others in the bag, leaching more proteins out that later have to be removed. If / when you swish the bag around (which I have seen many a homebrewer do), your water temperature changes due to exposure to the air. When this happens the enzymes do not produce the sugar profile you are seeking. The enzymes on the crushed (not chopped) malted barley are very temperature sensitive with a range of +/- 2 degrees F between activating different enzymes. One of the results of this lack of temperature control is inconsistency from batch to batch. I have done that in the past and then experienced the differences from batch to batch on the same recipe. When you do things right, and with precision, you gain control of a complicated, multi-variable system.

I am not promoting that people shouldn't home brew, but only that there are ways to enhance the qualities of your brew. There is a step up in the the quality of your brewing process when you go all grain with a proper mash / sparge setup. Getting the mix of sugars that will ferment or non-ferment materially changes the flavor profile. Contrary to other all-grain home brewers, I tend to use more or completely specialty grains rather than simple sugaring grains (2 row or 6 row plain barley). It is more expensive, but I think one can taste the difference. It really isn't that difficult to buy / build a proper sparge set-up for 5-6 gallon batches. Most all the materials store inside the larger vessels. Admittedly, I tend to value high precision in most things. I am also largely a neander in woodworking and I think that extends to brewing. Making alcohol is easy, making "beer" is somewhat hard, making good beer is hard, and making consistent good beer is harder still. But it ultimately is the goal. I offer my advice freely. No one has to take it.

As to the kits, having watched them being assembled at various places, I'll stand by my opinion.

Shawn...i have a decent home kegerator, and am loving some of the craft beer selections i have been able to find here in VT. But its a bit of a PIA tracking down good beers, and its a bit more expensive buying than i was hoping it would be. Around $245 for a half barrel...$135 for a 1/4, and $85 for a 1/6 plus a $50 deposit on the keg.

So being the diy type i have been toying with the idea of brewing and kegging my own beer and I was wondering if you would be able to point me in a direction to research and then ultimately purchase supplies.