Surly Eight Ale Label

I think his point was that he spent more than a few dollars on a product that he had every reason to believe would be of high quality, and finding out that that may not be the case is disappointing, as the money could have been used for something else, had he known the product might be inferior. I think most of us make the same judgment every day and none of us should be judged so harshly for our personal choices with literally zero knowledge of our life circumstances.

 

Of course he would be disappointed. Haven't argued that someone wouldn't or shouldn't that a bottle you get is bad. I simply asked what they were expecting Surly to do right now since bringing it to the store was not acceptable.

And again, if you are spending money on beer instead of groceries for a week, that's dumb. That's not harsh that's reality. Thing is I don't believe he's doing that, he was trying to bring some example of how it impacts people, it's just a poor example.

 

so the options laid out here are as follows:

If you think you have an infected bottle, but it is unopened
1. bring it to the store you bought it from for a refund
2. bring it to the brewery for them to swap out for a uninfected bottle and let them analyze it

If you open a bottle and it is infected
1. reseal somehow and bring it to the store you bought it from or the brewery????

My question is really around what you should do if you open a bottle and it is clearly infected. Is there any recourse for that bottle or are you just out?

 

Not yet. I think Surly needs to hear more about possible infected bottles. At this point I doubt they've really heard more than a few instances of it happening. Hard for them to make some sweeping action based on a few notices. That's why I'm confused on what people really expect them to do. I'd hope if it's infected, you can bring it to the store, get a refund, or bring it to the brewery for a new bottle. Surly can then refund the liquor stores, but they probably want to hear more about these first.

 

What I'd expect Surly to do is do some analysis on bottles they (presumably) still have, to find out if there are or are not unwelcome guests in the bottles. That's what other breweries have done.

We all know that reports of infection are sometimes overblown, isolated, or simply wrong. We also know that early reports of infection are sometimes a leading indicator that there's a big problem with the beer. It's clearly too early to tell.

However, the response of "return you beer with a receipt or bring an (open?) bottle to the brewery" is dumb (though who knows who "at the brewery" gave out that advice). As far as my beer-addled brain recalls, there hasn't been an infection issue with Surly beers to date, but the brewery has always seemed very responsive to me. If this becomes a widespread issue, I don't doubt they'll address it in a reasonable manner.

 

Agreed. It's not the easiest response/action, but as of now, probably the easiest they coudl give before making a bigger decision. I hope it's all figured out.

 

Two and a half cases of Eight on the floor at Big Top in Midway as of Saturday. $20.99

 

Any good store that knows how things work will take back bottles with no receipt, and no questions asked. Everybody take a deep breath!

 

Never once had a problem returning bad beer to a liquor store, even with a bottle or two gone.
My mom gave me a couple of bottles of Eight for xmas, hoping they are as good as the one I had on Thanksgiving.

 

Truth.

 

DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!!!!!

 

This is fair since this is the internet and you don't know me, but I can tell you 100% without a doubt the bottle I drank was so sour there was no question, and the difference between the multiple times I've had it on tap is night and day. A couple beer geek friends I trust have had very similar experiences as well. I have never had a Surly beer that has had an issue like this ever (and been a fan for many years trying/buying all the special releases, attending events, etc..). This was why it was so surprising to me. Still a fan, and BAing beers always has some risks... part of the reason I love surly is they do take risks a lot (Syx for example went from a hot sweet mess to amazing in a couple years imo). Anyway, sorry to dig up bad feelings on this beer - I am a fan of the intended product for sure.

 

Greetings from Surly –

Sorry we’re coming late to the party: with all that’s been going on with opening the new space, we didn’t notice the evolution of this thread from discussing Jawsh’s awesome label to quality concerns about the beer itself. A thread about the Surly Eight Ale Label isn’t the most obvious place for us to look for news about quality issues. Over the weekend, however, we began receiving reports of Surly Eight bottles being returned to stores for refunds, which led us to this thread. Having read through all the posts, let me bring you up to speed on what we know here at the brewery about Eight.

Towards the end of November, we received a pair of e-mails from people concerned about flavors in Eight. That triggered further examination of the beer. Since then, we have gone through our internal bottle archive, as well as private bottles brought in by Surly employees, and checked in with draft accounts. We did not find any indicators of compromised beer such as gushing, sourness, buttery or medicinal phenolic notes, or other off-flavors in those taste panels. Between Thanksgiving & Christmas, we did not hear anything new about Eight here at the brewery or out in the market. Over the Christmas holiday, we received some additional e-mails through the contact form on our website which described the beer as noticeably sour.

After hearing about the bottle returns on Monday, we had already re-opened our archive, and we paneled Eight on Tuesday. Again, we did not find any signs of an infection in those bottles. The samples do have a pronounced oak tannin character & complex oxidation profile from the barrels, and the rye whiskey contribution is distinctly different from what bourbon barrel aging would yield, all of which is in line with what Todd was aiming for with Eight. Based on that, we are confident that there is not a systemic issue with Surly Eight.

None of this means that the two people who wrote us in November were wrong about their bottles, or that we’re ignoring the reports from last week. I want to be clear about that: if there are compromised bottles out there, we will stand behind our work and do the right thing with those customers. They may be isolated incidents overall, but to the individual that bought those bottles, it is anything but isolated. We get that: we drink beer too. What I am saying is that we have found no reason to trigger a broad recall across the market. We had already sent out samples for a full analytical work-up prior to the release, which came back with a clean bill of health and the sensory work we’ve conducted thus far isn’t pointing to any kind of wide-ranging issue. We will conduct further analytical testing on our archived bottles, but based on what we’ve been able to see up to now, there is no reason to return unopened & untasted bottles back to retailers. We remain confident that your Surly Eight bottles taste the way we intended, and you’ll miss out on what we feel is an amazing beer.

There has been some confusion about the response from us that was shared here, and I don’t want that to slip between the cracks. The reason we mentioned retailers is that under Minnesota law, breweries cannot directly reimburse customers for purchases. The way the law looks at it, the transaction is between the customer and the retailer, with the retailer being credited for issued refunds later down the line. As far as bringing the beer back to the brewery, that was poor phrasing on our part. We can’t test an opened 750ml the way we could with an unopened can from the same 4-pk, and we can’t replace Eight from inventory we don’t have on hand. That’s all we meant, not that you’re screwed or we don’t care. We absolutely do.

We’ll continue to monitor this thread and answer questions as best as we can. If you do feel that you’ve had a flawed bottle of Surly Eight, contact us via e-mail here at the brewery and we’ll work with you to resolve the issue.

Gary Nicholas
Special Projects Coordinator
Surly Brewing

 

So, I've never returned anything to a liquor store, excuse my noobness.

Having had Eight on tap and having a few bottles at home, if I detect a significant difference from my on tap experience do I just drain pour the rest of the bottle and take an empty bottle back to the store for a refund? I mean, there's no way for me to tell that my bottle is potentially "off" without opening right?

Just want to clarify in case there is anyone like me who may be a dumby.

 

I've returned beer once. Bought a long-expired (and expensive) 4-pack and opened 2 at the same time. Returned the other 2 bottles and got store credit for the whole 4-pack. Just tell them it was infected or no date code or improperly sealed, etc. Sure its uncommon but they value repeat customers as much as any for-profit industry.

And no, you can't tell without opening if its "off." Unless you can see beard hair floating in it, in which case you should open it anyway and cultivate yeast with it.

 

I appreciate this response. As someone who dabbles in these matters at my work (although not in the food and beverage industry), I'm curious as to how your quality control sampling process works, if you're willing to share. I'm just trying to get some sense of the statistical sophistication of the process. I'm not looking to play gotcha involving the minutia of sampling techniques. Rather, I'm wondering how formal this testing and other testing you do are; are you following academically vetted practices or just grabbing a few bottles? I ask mostly out of curiosity, knowing that there's a ton of variation in the industry, from nanobrewers who have barely heard of QC let alone practice it to the extreme of Guinness, in which employees pioneered certain key facets of modern statistics. I also am interested specifically in regards to this issue, as a biased or insufficiently large sample resulting from a flawed sampling process could blind you to a legitimate problem. For the record, the only Eight I have had was on tap at the Beer Hall and was great and showed no problems. I do have a bottle aging in my cellar.

 

That was a great response...thank you

 

You can take the empty after you open one to see if you detect the sourness most stores should/ will refund you the money and reps for Johnson Bros are probably making stores are aware of this issue after above post also read what @pillzsix wrote

 

As I said in my post, if you have a bottle that is flawed, (sourness, gushing, etc), please contact us at the brewery: the more we hear & can ask about what you experienced, the better we can diagnose how it happened. Isolated incidents like this are difficult to get a handle on, so getting information is crucial. We'll work with you to resolve it from there.

 

@islay, thanks for asking. We collect & monitor basic brewing data points just like anyone else, but we aren’t currently running a formal statistical process control environment in a LIMS or other database structure. The in-house capabilities & sophistication of the quality program here at Surly will be expanding now that we have more dedicated space here at the new brewery. Currently, we send out samples for analytical & microbiological testing to an outside lab service. We’ll continue to do that periodically to validate our own testing procedures or gain access to equipment that we wouldn't have cause to own ourselves, but our goal is to bring more capability inside our walls so that we are more self-sufficient and responsive.

For situations like sampling bottles of Eight, we’re well aware of potential sample bias. The sample size of our Eight archive isn’t huge, but it’s a fair cross-section of the packaging run. It’s not as granular as I’d like, but that is something that improve as we go.