most important thing I've learned

[CliffH1]

Time. I've made 11 batches of homebrew so far. With about half of them, I was ready to pour them down the drain. They tasted that bad at one or two weeks. But I have been amazed at how they have improved with a couple months or a little more. Some of the terrible ones have become very good indeed.

 

My advice for any other new brewers is to go ahead and bottle every batch and wait. You can always pitch it later if you still can't stand it[crying]

 

Of course this doesn't apply to any nasty, stringy, slimey, gooey, obviously infected batches[devil]

 

Cliff

[Guest]

Patience is a virtue [cool]

[NewtownClown]

Even an infected beer (not slimey, stringy, gooey) can become an interesting sour beer over time!

I have one brewer friend for whom a "bad" batch (full of diacetyl and like sucking on a Werther's Original) was great after 2 years! Oxidation introduced some great sherry and stone fruit notes and was close to a Fuller's Vintage (without the higher alcohol)!

[Guest]

Not so long ago I laid my hands (legit) in a dozen rubberised kegs... some of them were full!!

 

They had been sitting in a backyard with no cover for 3 years with the obvoius melbourne temp fluctuations, I made a HLT from one and kept a few but got rid of the rest, long story short a bloke got 7 of them, most with some amount of beer in them and turned them into drinkable beer... (sours) buggered if I know how but rekoned it came out a good drop..

 

I believe from memory he said they were some sort of wheat beer.

 

all I can say is that the smell when I de-pressurised one was frikkin repugnant and I said he was a better man than I for even attempting to make it drinkable... will try and dig up the email that said what he did [innocent]

 

Yob