Lost Abbey's Current Approach to Bottle Carbonation Quality Control

How does factoring in that Hunaphu is a crappy beer factor in?

 

You should ask a seasoned trading veteran about that.

 

Lost Abbey should have a carbonation notification system similar to what the Vatican uses when announcing a new Pope? Lots of black smoke.

 

While we're on the subject, has anyone opened a bottle of this year's Red Poppy yet?

 

Need to tick Pope beer...

 

Popped a flat bottle of Judgement Day this weekend.

 

Not sure if it was an older bottle or this years, the date was smudged too badly to read, but sadly I have. Worst $16 I've spent on beer. Seemed like the carbonation was off and had a weird funk to it, like sour but not in a good way.

 

Love the name. "Empty seed." Good way to tell us they're firing blanks!!! Lol!!!

 

I opened two so far - one was perfectly fine and the other was flat. The flat beer was still good, but after having the beer as it should be every time, the flat version was extremely disappointing.

 

Mine was really tasty but I only got it because I split it with a buddy, otherwise not worth the price.

 

Yeah, I won't be buying any. I only ask so I can answer the inevitable questions I'll get from people who haven't yet given up on buying LA bottles.

 

Also ISO fwiw.

 

they didn't think to check the gravity before they bottled? If you put it in the barrels at one gravity reading and it comes out lower than anticipated then you'd think they'd be able to figure out that their ABVs were getting raised a little.

proper QC and repeatability are the hallmarks of a successful commercial brewery. LA does alright and they have name recognition but they've been plagued by issues.

 

They're likely picking up the extra alcohol from leftover/absorbed spirits in the barrel, not continued fermentation, in which case a check of the specific gravity won't tell the whole story.

 

ethanol has a different molecular weight than water and sugar molecules so a change in gravity from prior to the barrel to shortly before bottling outside of what was expected would point to hinky things going on with the beer. And depending on when undesired bacteria gets into the beer that would also cause a difference in gravity...

Aside from that with a simple fractional distillation setup I could tell you the approximate ABV of a beer based upon the known boiling temperature of ethanol. It's seriously basic college level chemistry.