Bitter Defeat...

In my 10 months of brewing I've thrown out one 5-gallon batch. It was gross, even after sitting for a bit and carbonating. Captain Pete fondly refers to it as "Hose-Ass Beer" since it tasted like hose water.

One batch until now...although it is not quite official (I'm giving it another week to mellow, but the outlook is grim) I believe I will be tossing my second batch. This time 10-gallons of strong ale from my original recipe that we love so much. Brewing was perfect, hit mash temps and gravities spot-on, and it fermented out quickly and had an accurate final gravity. But there was one problem...tasting of the sample I took while transferring to secondary were god-awful bitter. So bitter it punched out the caramel flavors we love completely, leaving nothing but bitter agony, and frustration. I still don't know what happened. Was it the new brewery? the yeast? hops? contamination? Tonight I'm going to taste the pumpkin ale for comparison, and pray it doesn't have the same bite!