O'so/Funk Factory 4/4 release

(using your post as a launch point, not solely directed at you)


what i don't get is "i drink their regular lineup and everything i've had from them has been great but this one bottle of beer i tried, after spending 300 to buy 12 before tasting, isn't up to my standards so i will never buy another product from them ever again. i'm advising everyone i know to boycott this company because they are clearly only setup for a short-run scam to take our money."

it's the expectation that a small company, still relatively new, that is taking chances and learning on the fly to satisfy the urges of their beer geek fans... should have the same QC as a major international company. the rate of error is probably not all that far off just on a much much much much smaller numbers scale.

if O'so has a 1% error rate out of 1000 bottles and the 10 people who happen to get it are beer nerds.... they can 86 ever attempting to make that beer again. those 10 nerds are going to savage not just the beer but the company and the people who made it.

there won't be any "hey, they swung for the fence on this one and it didn't work out but kudos for the effort.. i love seeing a brewery that i love pushing boundaries and making new beer." it will be "this is the worst beer i have ever tasted. literally would not feed it to a hobo. they purposefully cheated me and dozens of other "loyal" drinkers. we drove hundreds of miles, spent hundreds of dollars and pumped money in to the local economy to come to this release and they purposefully screwed us over for a buck. they are only about screwing over people to make a few pennies. we "loyal" beer drinkers cannot tolerate this from the beer community. BOYCOTT "X BREWERY!!!!"

if Miller has makes 10,000,000 bottles with a 1% error rate... nobody notices or cares and they go on happily about their day. they can afford to experiment, have a bad batch, throw away more beer in a day than some breweries make in a year.

it's a huge chance that these places take to make these beers.... and they make them because of US. the people behind the breweries are, by and large, just like you and me. they started doing this because they love beer, experimentation, science. they like the community, they like working for themselves, they support their local community. all the things you can read people cheering about here.

but when the rubber meets the road, beer geeks (a small but vocal minority) will heel turn and savage any brewery that makes a single beer they don't like because they feel they are "owed" something by these companies.

everyone is entitled to their opinion, to sound the alarm so others don't buy the beer, no shame in that. i can appreciate the heads up so that i'm not wasting my money, too. i doubt very seriously that the people at O'so are crowing about the possibility of a flat/infected/off beer.. they aren't running to stuff pennies in their mattresses while the city burns down around them.

holy shit the diarrhea of vitriol that follows some of these releases is just plain childish.

i have a 4 year old who whines less about fairness

 

Get a grip Elkabong and bmony26.

 

I think a few people have built a large strawman here that anyone here who is frustrated with the quality of O'so releases "will heel turn and savage any brewery that makes a single beer they don't like because they feel they are "owed" something by these companies." And then there are quite a few silly ad hominem attacks dispersed through the thread. I am not personally bothered by that, but diarrhea of vitriol concept does make me chuckle, especially after that one guy snapping at another poster about his wife not liking a beer and taking up a whole page earlier in this thread. On the bright side, I think we can agree that we're all passionate about craft beer here.

 

The funny thing here is I spent several hundred dollars on this release, drove 8 hours round trip, and repeatedly mentioned that some of their beer is really excellent ... but I should drink miller and budweiser because I'm too afraid of inconsistency. ;-)

The thing is, it's not either / or: you don't EITHER support small, adventurous, local business and accept variable quality standards OR demand consistency and just support mega-breweries. It should be AND: support local business AND demand high quality / consistency. "Craft" shouldn't be a synonym for inconsistency. I know that's not what you're saying and I get that it can take a while to get there ... but hiding issues or pretending they don't exist isn't doing anyone any favors, drinkers or breweries. Holding small businesses up to a very high quality / consistency standard isn't a disservice. If anything I said sounded negative that wasn't my intention. I meant it as constructive criticism. I don't see the vitriol in this thread personally; it all seems fairly civil.

Now, I'm really going to shut up until I crack one of those bottles. Cheers!

 

Quality control. Have some O'so.

 

Blackberry been sitting at room temp for 4 months. And it tastes spectacular. Got more if anyone is interested...

 

The point I was making that obviously went over your head was aimed at those who criticized the latest release without even tasting any of the beers from the release. How can one have an opinion about something, positive or negative when they haven't even tried it?

 

Has anyone asked oso if they will issue refunds or exchanges ?

 

Telling people that are having reasonable discussions about the quality control of these O'so special releases to go drink Budweiser is not "a point". Craft beer and consistency are not mutually exclusive.

The reviews on untappd for the Coconut are following the same trend as the past release: draft reviews positive and nearly every other bottle review complaining about sour and tart flavors.

 

FTFY

 

The bottles aren't infected, but did potentially pick up off flavors from ancient barrels. The flavors will be tasted more by some than others. The taps were single barrels or taken from different blends before adjuncting, leading to variation between tap and bottle. The flavor in the bottles will not get worse over time like it would with an infection, but I would suspect will not go away either. Temperature storage will probably not affect anything (with the exception of the undercarbonated bottles). Stop fighting.

 

well that takes all the fun out of the speculating

was really expecting to come back today to read that bottles of one of these beers gave someones buddy the mumps or something

THEY ARE LITERALLY POISONING US TO MAKE MONEY!!!1one11@!

 

and, frankly, i've had enough of these abusive ad hominem strawman tu quoques words words words words i see bandied about on the internet that people use anytime there's a disagreement

 

What are "Ancient Heaven Hills" barrels? Is that something specific or just their way of saying "they're really old"? I have no knowledge of barrels but assume that it would be harder to find really old barrels that are in good shape? In a different thread regarding Boulevard's stouts they chimed in that the Rum BA version they'd planned wasn't happening because the barrels they received were in very bad shape.

Anyone know more about these "Ancient" barrels?

 

Since I opened my big mouth and created a ruckus, I thought I should at least pour some beer in that gaping orifice. I opened a bottle of the Imperial Night Train with Coconut tonight. I let it sit at room temp for about 30 minutes after pulling it out of the fridge to warm to appropriate stouty temps. Pouring, it looked promising. It was carbonated. It settled into a ring around the edges pretty quickly, but it didn't fizz and have mutant bubbles as you would expect from an infected beer. Dark, opaque, but didn't pour with crazy motor oil viscosity ... which you wouldn't expect from the abv. Smell. Interesting. If you had told me this was a coconut and mixed berry BA stout I'd have believed you. I might have even "holy shitted" you, because it smells like a pretty damned great coconut and berry stout. The flavor follows, with more tartness. I wouldn't say it's thin, but it's not thick. I'm not a body guy ... I don't bemoan every beer for not being an under-attenuated double barrel milkshake so this doesn't bother me. Would a bit more body be good? Sure. Is it thin? Definitely not. I can't speak to how this tartness plays with body ... I only observe the two. Correlation at best, not causation.

I'll agree with the above statement that this is not infected. BUT, it's also slightly tart, berry flavored sour stout which is NOT what they advertised. And, to go back to my previous point, I really doubt the brewed, barreled, bottled this without knowing what the product was. Not telling people - "hey, this has all kinds of crazy berry flavors but it's super tasty" - is inexcusable to me. It's ok. It's not foul. I kinda like it. But it's not what I thought I was getting. It is potentially an AMAZING beer if they could get the body a touch thicker and amp up the stout character (and minimize the "berrry sour" randomness).

I ended up rating it something like a 3.6. If I was rating it to style - i.e. as a BA imperial stout - I'd give it a 2. But I rated it more as "does this smell good" and "does this taste good" than "does this taste / smell like a BA imperial stout."

QC is an issue. BUT, even moreso, transparent communication is an issue. O'so just needs to tell people what they're selling. I don't think anyone can dispute that. There was no indication in any promotions that this was sour / tart / berry flavored and that's not right, IMHO.

 

Why do people think Night Train is a stout?

 

We're talking Imperial Night Train, not Night Train ... and I don't think we need to go down the "what's the difference between an Imperial Porter and a Stout" rat hole. But perhaps it's because Imperial Night Train is listed on this site as an Imperial Stout and the bottle, as far as I can tell, doesn't list a style other than malt beverage?

That said, I've only had regular Night Train once and it was obviously a porter ... but I guess after 3 beers my critical thinking wasn't in peak form! ;-)

Replace "stout" with "porter" in my rambling review and it remains the same. It's not like "oh, snap - the berry flavor goes away when I call it a porter."

 

I bought one bottle from O'so (coconut night train) during this last release because of the reported issues from the prior release. Didn't want to chime in until I tried it myself. Once the head cleared, there were some small thin flakes that I assume are coconut. Nose is syrupy booze (think cough syrup). There's definitely a tart berry flavor to the taste, not what I was expecting. If I was blind tasting this, I'd think it was Raspberry Truffle Abduction from Pipeworks, barrel aged. Not a bad beer, just not what I paid for.

 

It has to do with the fact that you made a statement about the body of the beer in your first rambling statement. It's a porter, so don't judge its body as a stout. That is WHY it matters and I said something. Not just you, but others make mention of a lighter body, and it's like we'll yeah its a porter and that's how it is.

 

I thought this thread would be about FF Fox and the Grapes. Boy was I wrong... I'll be actively looking for a bottle to go along with the Door Kriek and Framrood bottles I have.