A solution (kind of) for sour home brew.

[DavewithGuns]

G'day.  One of my issues being in the country and on tank water is sour home brew.  I can clean my kits and bottles etc but sometimes one of those stray bits of bacteria floats by at the wrong time, lands in my fermenter as I'm mixing or testing SG or some of that bird poo, dead moth etc remains in the water and the whole lot goes bad.  And by bad I mean undrinkable.  But I found a solution - kind of - and it comes from the Chinese Take Away and their staple 'Sweet & Sour'.  The Chinese when something is too sweet added a side dish that was a bit sour and if something was too sour they 'sweetened' it up a bit.  So I thought 'Why not try sweetening up my home brew?'  But I didn't want to add sugar whilst it was still in the bottles - bloody thing might explode.  And I don't like too much sugar so why not make a Shandy?  Diet Lemonade mixed with the home brew might be quite refreshing on a hot day.  So I gave it a go with a batch of Mr Beer Bewitched Amber Ale that was undrinkable  (side point - Mr Beer mixes seem particularly susceptible to getting sour with my water, Coopers works pretty good though) and ...bugger me but it worked!  If anything a 50/50 mix of lemonade and beer was too much and I could use less Lemonade in the future.   But the sourness was gone, the beer flavour was reduced but I put that down to too much Lemonade.  And I know the point of home brewing is make your own beers of different varieties and flavours and watering them down is counterproductive to this BUT if you want to save some of your effort and not tip your homebrew down the sink then consider putting some aside in the fridge for those stinking hot days and drink them as a Shandy.  Another side note my German relatives tell me a Shandy is known as a Radler and some Germans on hot days prefer to mix Coke in with their beer and make something they call a 'ColaBier'.  So there you go.

[Malter White]

On my first foray into home brewing over 20 years ago I ended up only making stouts for the same reason. The beer was bad. Add lemonade and you've got a Portagaff. It was still bad but the lemonade hid a few brewing sins.
Roll forward 20 years and armed with better information I now make beers I'm more than happy with.
@DavewithGuns Do you have any temperature control over your brews? I'm certain my beers were bad because of the fluctuations in temperature and not from bacteria. The reason I say this is because the brews were kept in my garage without temperature control. All my equipment was clean as far as I know. My FV had an airlock so it'd be difficult for bacteria to get in.
If you aren't keeping your ferment temperature steady as possible, you really should try. I reckon the results will be better beers and you'll save money on lemonade.  

[DavewithGuns]

G'day Muzzy.  I keep pretty detailed notes and even a 'league ladder' of my brews so going back I can see that for this last one, Mr Beer Bewitched Amber Ale, the temps were spot on throughout the 11 days I kept in the keg.  Before tasting I had it bottled for 10 weeks under the stairs in the house, temperature again good.  Another one that went sour was another Mr Beer, the Northwest Pale Ale and for it too I recorded good temperatures etc but it was diabolical.  Most brews work pretty well, at the moment I'm enjoying Morgans Australian Bitter and another Mr Beer called the Long Play IPA - ironically I actually mucked up the IPA and got my calculations wrong and bottled it way to soon but it's still worked, extended bottling (14 weeks) helped I think.