Crooked Stave's Diacetyl Problem

Well I'm extremely humbled tonight.

I had a Persica Blend 2 and was my first ever Crooked Stave drain pour. Fate, karma, whatever you call it, I guess my luck had to run out after so many good bottles from Crooked Stave (and I've had well over 100). To those who experienced diacetyl in their Persica's as well, I now feel your pain.

It was one of the biggest butter bombs I've ever had, so much so that I doubt it was ever going to get cleaned up. My wife and I were set to enjoy it on the back patio and instead both of us turned to each other and said, "I can't finish this" so there went the rest of the bottle down the drain.

And we enjoyed a Cuvee de Jacobins Rouge instead.

 

I'll weigh in on this. I've opened about 4 of each Blend and haven't noticed any buttery or off flavors and each of these bottles was shared with at least one other person and no one else noticed any off flavors. I'm not challenging anyone, just speaking to bottle variation. I feel pretty lucky after hearing about all the butter bombs out there.

 

Um oh...I'm probably due next At the same time, I still remember the first versions of Petit Sour and WWB...so I've already covered the drain pour base before.

 

I finally had a bad run with blend 2 as well. First real butter bomb from them yet

 

Seems to be mostly Blend 2 at this point. I haven't opened one of those in a while. Probably going to let them rest even longer.

 

No perceivable diacetyl in flavor and aroma. If you look at the guidelines, I only see one style where it says low is acceptable. Which makes me assume that levels of dicetyl that are less than "low" is also acceptable.

Everything else, "The absence of diacetyl is also acceptable", "Absence of diacetyl is desirable", "Diacetyl if evident should be very low", "Diacetyl should be absent.", "Diacetyl can be absent or barely perceived at very low levels.", "Very low levels of diacetyl...if perceived".

 

Fair enough. I have never looked through the BA style guidelines before. Any BJCP judges out there know if this is the case with BJCP guidelines as well? I'm to lazy to look and this Stone SSR growler and tower defense game distracts me...

 

Czech/Bohemian Pilsner is usually the whipping boy for diacetyl, but plenty of great examples have none. Depending on where you get it and which version of it you get, Urquell doesn't even always have it. Zatec, Budweiser, and Staropremen don't. Sometimes I actually wonder if that was a flaw that the BJCP codified and now even Urquell is stuck sticking to it...a la the Heineken skunk.

 

I haven't had a butter bomb yet, but I did have a (very) infected bottle of Raspberry Dark Origins that I opened up two weeks ago. I cried myself to sleep that night.

 

What issues did the Raspberry Dark Origins have?

 

It was just infected. I opened the bottle and it blew like a geyser. I'm certain it would've popped the bottle cap had the bottle not been waxed. Fizzing like crazy in the glass. Taste-wise, the beer was way off (I've had "normal" bottles of RDO before). Almost no fruit character, but very vinegary.

I've come to expect bottle variations with sours and the occasional bad bottle. But it still hurts to drain pour a $12 bottle.

 

A group of us cracked some Origins Cherry and Origins Raspberry last Friday. Our raspberry was also a geyser (luckily none of it was wasted...) but it tasted fine. The Cherry one has developed a lot more sour character with the sweetness being mostly gone.

 

Thanks! I am finding that the fruited CS sours don't age as well as I expected. Looks like I'm cracking open my last Cherry this weekend. First world problems.

 

Agreed.

 

From what I've noticed, the CS fruit beers tend to lose their fruity character but show more dramatic flavor profile changes over the course of short periods of time. That can be both good and bad, but it's a fun experiment if you have a few bottles.
That's contrasted with say...the AC Golden sours which lose the fruity sweetness, but retain the fruit essence a little more. At the same time, while they evolve, they're more of a known quantity on day 1. I've never had one go awry or change dramatically for better or worse.
I assume that's related to brett vs. pedio and the like.

 

I agree with the AC Golden comparison. I've also noticed the same with Cascade. I opened a 2011 Sang Noir about a month ago and it was cherry deliciousness. When I open my last bottle of Cherry Origins in the coming weeks, I'll be able to give an accurate comparison.

 

...and the Batch 60 I opened last night was buttery. Not the heaviest I've ever had, but it was pretty unmistakable. The dry hop character had more or less dissipated, too. I had hoped it might stick around longer (Le Terroir still has a bit a year later), but Batch 60 isn't drinking very well right now. I still have one bottle left, so I'm going to hang on to it for a while and see what happens.

 

We went to Crooked Stave a few days ago and the chick behind the bar was talking to us about the diacetyl problems. We were picking up some bottles to complete a trade and she slyly recommended against the newest batch of Surette because of how much of a diacetyl bomb they were. It's getting kind of out of control.

 

Newest being Batch 9? Because I just bought two of those on Sunday and nobody said a word about it

 

I'm still not necessarily afraid of it. I've probably had 50 C.S. bottles at various times and have only gotten that note from 2-3. I've gotten butyric acid more often than butter, and that tends to ebb, flow, and often disappear with time.
Like some brilliant minds have stated, sometimes brett is a douche.