Time Heals All Wounds?

I have had only one bad batch of beer since I started brewing way way back in May of 2008. It was batch #3 and my understanding of what the problem could be was tenuous at best. The beer tasted like chemicals and was completely un-drinkable (despite the fact that we drank it). I bottled some of that batch for a couple of reasons. I wanted to see if, over time, the beer "fixed itself" and I wanted to have some more knowledgeable people try it and tell me what the problem was.

I did have some beer guru types try it and the problem they identified was in-step with my main suspicion - chemicals in the beer (duh). At the time this would have been Oxy-Clean or One-Step that did not get rinsed thoroughly from some vessel that the beer spent time in during its birth.

I changed my cleaning ritual and eliminated the One-Step, replacing it with StarSan. I also made sure that I rinsed a few more times than I thought was necessary just to be sure. I have not had a problem since.

Until batch #10. Same exact problem. In fact, it is even worse than batch #3. It's like drinking industrial strength glue. I'm not sure what happened, but now I'm sure that what I am tasting is Oxy-Clean. I'm guessing that I was tired during one of the transfers and racked the batch into a keg that I had not rinsed very well. But there is light at the end of this tunnel, right?

Today, with hope in my heart, I grabbed one of the bottles from batch #3. It has been a few months and if the beer could fix itself, it should have by now. I knew that if the beer in the bottle was good, I could just take the batch #10 keg and store it for a few months and it would be fine. No harm done.

But no. The bottled beer, although clear and gorgeous, tasted the same - bad.

So this weekend I will be doing something I have never done - dumping a full keg of beer. I can't even bring myself to con my friends into drinking this stuff - it is just hideous.