Ok, So I finally got my buddy to try home brewing. He is doing a kit. I walked him through it and brew day was fun and went well. I wasn't there for bottling yesterday and he had some 'issues'. He used the dishwasher method to sterilize his bottles which in of itself is ok but he didnt do a visual inspect on all the bottles before using them and some had crud remnants (mold etc) on the bottom. The bottles sat in his garage for a coupe of months. Post dishwasher, he filled and capped some of these 'bad bottles' (~25% of the bunch he says...ouch). Ok, while this is obviously not ideal, should he throw those out or is there a chance the hot cycle from the dishwasher killed/sterilized what was in there and he will be ok down the road? I told him he may have to toss these out but I wanted to see what you all think if he should just hold off and wait and see. My thought was that it might sound and look ugly but -maybe- it may turn into "just additional sediment" (since the bad ones had crud only at the very bottom of the affected bottles and no where else according to him) so there may be a decent chance that whatever was at the bottom was most likely dead alredy from the heat/disinfect cycle from the wash and dry cycle. Thoughts? Toss or wait? Obviously he is bummed. I told him to wait until I got back (today) but he was amped and did it last night... Thanks all!
Don't throw, but don't wait long, either. Give the bottles 2 weeks to prime and throw them in a 33 degree fridge and drink up. Bottle infections show up gradually. The beer gets worse with time, do drink before that happens. The body gets thinner, the beers less flavorful, and gushers are a regular occurrence.
I agree not to toss them. You should be able to tell which ones have crud on the bottom of the bottle. 2 Weeks to prime and toss the crud bottles in the fridge or in a covered milk crate, just in case. Ideally, the dishwasher killed all the microbes in each bottle. The drawback would be that the crud will still flavor each bottle differently. Those should be drank first in hopes that the beer only gets better when you move to the clean bottles.
I wouldn't just toss them either, but he should know that the beer will probably not be the best it could be without adequate cleaning of the bottles beforehand. The precautions against potential infection are good advice, and if the dirty bottles are the ones consumed first, that should minimize the risk of exploding bottles. Hopefully he won't be discouraged by this one mistake, and he will try again with better cleaning/sanitation practices on the next batch.
Some will suffer and others might soar. Even under the best of sanitary conditions you'll get a bottle or two that are just different for some reason. This is the nature of LIVE beer. Embrace it. And learn from it. Just mame sure to open them close to the sink in case you get a gusher.
Mmmm crud flavor. I can see the tasting notes now "tastes like dirty donkey dick, exactly the profile I was looking for." They might blow up and probably taste like bad but if it is his first homebrew he will think it is fantastic. Carry on.
