By James Knapp

So you’ve decided to get into brewing your own beer at home. Congrats! You are now committed to a never ending torrent of frustration and disappointment as to why the fuck things never turn out even remotely right. 

But at the very least you can be prepared with some handy excuses when everyone at your Dokken cover band’s practice wants to know why the beer you brought tastes like stale bandages.

1. Blame Your Ingredients

This is probably the simplest way to explain why your latest IPA has the consistency of runny Fixodent – just say you used the wrong ingredients. You can play this off as if you’re still tinkering with the recipe or even deflect it completely by shifting all the focus onto “that know-nothing dipshit at the supplier.” Either way, your incompetent ass is in the clear.

2. Blame the Bottles

There’s a lot that can go wrong during the bottling process. Maybe too much air gets in the bottles – maybe not enough air gets in there. Who gives a shit when you’re trying to scrape calcified wort off the cap because, maybe, that’s where all the flavor went? When in doubt, blame the bottles.

3. Blame Corporate Greed

We all know that the once thriving and independent craft brewing industry is now in the shitter, under the ever pumping plunger of Anheuser-Busch attempting to cram malted fecal matter down our gullets in the form of an $11 pilsner with a fucking pine tree on the label.

Actually, that last bit there was a pretty good opener. Just say that to anyone who criticizes your homemade prison punch and that should shut them right the hell up.

4. Blame Climate Change

If you’re a risk taker, then it would explain why you’ve decided to painstakingly craft your own version of a readily available and far superior product in the first place. But it also means you may want to swing for the fences and attempt to blame the entirety of the nastiness you’re currently ruining your neighbors barbeque with on climate change.

Keep in mind, this only works if the goons you’re pawning off hoppy antifreeze to don’t understand the science behind it – so before you try this excuse, check if there are any meteorologists in the crowd first.

5. Blame Your Wife… While You Still Can

The life of a homebrew master is a lonely one. If you decide to go down this path there is a 100% chance that your significant other is going to leave you. So while you still have them around, may as well use them to soak up the damage as much as possible before she takes the kids to her mother’s house and freezes all of your joint accounts – and even then you can probably swing some grief pity for why that porter looks like swamp thing’s fresh jizz.