Infected Barrel Aged Yeti

in the real world (i.e., not in school), you're judged on what you produce. period. no dog ate my homework, my computer file was messed up, whatever excuses.

my review stands until great divide gets another bottle (not infected this time please) into my hands.

 

re: infection argument, pretty much all personal opinion...

but i don't think the "don't review infected bottles" makes sense. you're reviewing the brewers' actions, not their intent. they most likely *intended* to make a better beer than they did in the first place (most brewers, most beers). that doesn't matter.

what shouldn't be reviewed is product that gets somehow messed up by distributors / retailers / bad storage by consumer, etc etc. infection is never their fault, so always up for review.

i'll not review infected beers for more subjective, opinion-based reasons, but if you're talking about the basic "we're reviewing the brewer's work!" idea, 1) you can't review intentions, 2) infection is always the brewery's fault.

p.s. infection appears to be an unavoidable risk with barrel aging, by they way, so it's not like infected barrel aged beers mean a brewery is bad--but it could very easily mean that beer is bad, so why review it otherwise?

 

Your analogy is faulty & actually reinforces the point that brewers are responsible for infections. A corrupted file wouldn't be the paper writer's fault (necessarily, though it could be). An infected beer IS the fault of the brewer. The brewer is responsible for their product.The product is faulty. If not, where do you think the responsibility lies? It's OK if they just admit it?

I also want to point out that I think Great Divide is a very good brewery that makes very good beers. I've never had a single issue with their quality before, so I'd be surprised if my bottle is infected. And bummed out that I wasted good money.

 

The problem is that there always will be bottles not sent back. You still see bottles of 2009 Abyss up for trade, despite the best advertised compensation program of any brewery that has experienced problems.

Perhaps you can suggest some method for ensuring that people don't buy or trade for beers that are infected.

Perhaps you should also suggest we not discuss it here in the forums either? After all, this isn't fair to the brewery by your way of thinking. Perhaps we should not even use the word infection, it is so negative, and it may hurt the brewery in some way. How much leeway are you willing to give the brewer? I tend to give leeway to the victim, but you seem not to. You somehow feel by your arguments that the brewery is the victim, when in fact it was laxity in sanitation which caused the problem, and they are solely responsible for that.

 

What I've said:
-Great Divide must notify and compensate all buyers that they can. If they fail to do this, the bad reviews should stay up.
-If they do notify and compensate, those compensated should be kind enough to take down the infected reviews.

I don't see how this paints Great Divide as the victim. They should be given leeway insofar as they take the time and cost of apologizing and refunding. I never said that nobody should talk about the infection, nor did I say that it should never be mentioned in reviews. To the contrary, people should be aware of the infection problems they have (regardless of refunds), and considering they haven't announced it, I think the infected reviews should stay up.

Even if there was a refund, naturally not everybody who bought or got bottles would be compensated. This is an inevitable fact about goods circulating in a market. I don't see how this affects the situation. Those who do get the refund should take the reviews down as a measure of kindness, and those who don't can do whatever they want. Burning a straw man isn't an effective argument.

 

to be fair, it's moreso just that barrels are basically impossible to sanitize, and they don't pasteurize or whatever like deschutes does now. it's not necessarily true that they "made a mistake" (though there are QC things they could have done--and i suspect *did* with a small sample size-- to bring out signs of infection pre-release), but the bottom line is that they made the beer, so they take responsibility for the whole thing.

(as a further complicator to that point though, someone mentioned on here that the 50/50 guy brags that he's never had an infected BA beer, which if true is amazing)

edit: by the way, i don't mean that any barrel aged beer is as likely to get infected as any other one; these guys do take steps to avoid it. i mean that you can't guarantee an uninfected beer in barrels the way you can in metal.

 

I agree, the brewer is responsible for the product and is responsible for the mistake. But as considerate adults we sometimes refrain from screwing somebody once they've admitted their blunder and attempted to rectify the situation, especially in a case where the mistake was accidental.

 

they'll live. also, it's a consumer review site.

 

I would hope that the moral status of a certain action is the criteria by which we decide whether to do it or not, rather than whether or not the victim will be harmed very much (the baker will live even if I steal a loaf of bread every week, but I still don't do it because it's wrong). Either way, these are just my personal reasons as to why I wouldn't review the infected beer if I got a refund.

 

I am not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but reviews for infections should absolutely stay on the site for people who are new to beer who may want to trade for BA Yeti (or any beer that may have had a possible infection issue) in the future without seeing this thread or doing research beyond reading reviews.

I know that most beer advocates wouldn't trade a beer with a possible infection to a person without letting them know, but there are people out there who would trade the beer without mentioning it.... and that would suck for the person trading for it.

Also, it is absolutely the brewer's responsibility once the beer has left their hands. Charging $30 for a bottle of beer is quite an investment for many people and I expect that the product within was created with the utmost care (using the freshest barrels, making sure that the environment is completely sanitary, etc). Sure, mistakes happen, but it should be on public record when a breweries products are not always up to snuff. A lot of people don't buy Lost Abbey products because of carbonation issues. I am personally wary of Cigar City because of their many past production issues. Reviews are just one way of letting others know that a certain beer or beers from a specific brewery may not have the utmost quality and care put into them. Or if the brewery does not have a quality control program.

 

you're getting it the wrong way around. you said we should refrain from screwing them because we're considerate. that statement is of course to be evaluated by whether or not the victim would be harmed very much. this further thing you said about morality is irrelevant.

 

oh man. you're overthinking this too much. i sent an e-mail to great divide. i'll report back on what, if anything, they do in response to my e-mail.

 

FWIW, I had a bottle on Friday because of all the talk about infections. Tasted, well....tasty!

 

I have bottle 2064, so I am crossing my fingers mine will be fine as well. I will report back later this week.

 

Opened my bottle last Friday. No signs of infection, but the beer was flatter than *put your least liked anexoric supermodel here*

 

It's hilarious to me how some people think that their reviews affect breweries and or their consumers.

 

You may find humor in it, but that doesn't make it any less true if you were paying closer attention. It certainly doesn't affect the wider population, but it absolutely affects the sales of expensive bombers that Joe Six Pack would never pick up.

Case in point: Deschutes The Stoic. The terrible initial reviews & widespread mockery led this to hang around on shelves in this part of the world for a long time (in fact, I just saw a few last week after all this time). Point being, if us free-spending beer geeks 'find out' that a beer isn't up to snuff via reviews/scores, at $10+ a bomber, the stuff is going to hang on stores shelves for a long time.

 

The one I had "fresh" was wonderful. Truth be told, I hope my other one is infected. The infected CCB Big Sound was incredible.

 

Not in the case of -bals...unless someone can come up with a cost effective way to check barrels for bugs before they fill them.

 

Just wanted to chime in that my bottle #3596 was definitely infected.