Green Flash Cellar 3 Series - "Silva Stout"

I had a 2/16 in Iowa. Butterscotch to me and my blind wife (she's not really blind, but she didn't know to expect butter). Poured ~20 oz. I don't doubt some people would have enjoyed it though. Hell, I figured I might be alright because I tend to like butterscotch. Maybe I should have mixed it with a peanut butter porter and chocolate stout for a delightful liquid scotcheroo.

 

Has anyone had any luck getting a refund or replacement from Green Flash? I've had this happen with 2 other breweries, and both send replacement bottles, one did it with a different vintage, and the other with different beers. Happy with that kind of customer service!

 

This stuff is junk in the bottles. However I hear it's fantastic on tap. The guy telling you to drink two more bad bottles is hilarious. For thag reason, I will gladly bring my money to other breweries in the future! Bye bye green flash.

 

FYI. 4 of us bought bottles in Austin and our first instinct, we all thought it was a butterscotch bourbon bomb and had individually poured our bottles out. We just thought it was a terrible beer but now reading this article post drain pours we realize there are possible off flavors and this is a bad batch. You can imagine we are all a little angry considering the $20 price and do not plan on drinking Green Flash beers again

 

I bought one of these when it was 1st released and hadI it in my beer aging fridge since. After reading all these reports I decided to pop it last night. I'm no expert, but to me it was pretty bad. I poured $20 down the drain and then popped. 2015 Stone Russian Imperial stout and felt much better.

 

I'm mad I wasted $18 each on 2 bottles, but sometimes shit happens. Green Flash isn't the first brewery that had an infection and certainly won't be the last. If they make this right by giving refunds to unopened bottles or sending replacements, I'll continue to buy their beer.

 

I have 3 bottles if anyone wants to work a trade! I have yet to try it as I'm aging mine a it longer.

 

Went to Green Flash Cellar 3 today and was able to try Silva Stout on tap at the source. I've had it in bottles multiple times in years past and loved it. Figured there was no way they would have a bad batch on tap. Boy was I wrong! Never have I had any beer - let alone a BA stout - that was this buttery. I asked the beertender what was up with the butterscotch flavor and he admitted that there was a low "acceptable" level of diacetyl. He said that every barrel was different and that was why they blended with fresh Double Stout to smooth things out. Fortunately I only had a $2.25 taster, but I'm still in disbelief that GF considers this level of diacetyl to be "acceptable".

For what it's worth, I also sampled the Mostra Coffee version on tap. It was a full 3% higher ABV and extremely coffee forward, to the point that I could barely detect any other flavors.

 

Wait, so at the brewery themselves they have a keg on with obviously detectable diacetyl, and they are saying that is "acceptable"? Not cool in my opinion...

I have had a few experiences with really small brewpub / restaurants selling their own beer that was a bit off, but I have never heard of a serious brewery passing off flawed beer that way. That attitude does not bode well for the people with bad bottles.

 

Or where BA beers devolve into drainpours...boo Green Flash.

 

lol I'm guessing you made this post without reading any of the other posts in this thread.

 

Actually, I'm guessing just the opposite.

 

Bought 3 bottles...drank one last night not bad (no butter) but wasn't impressed by this one

 

Butter bomb reporting in. Nasty stuff, I will stay away from GF if possible.

 

Any brewery employee that says 99% of the bottles are good should have to meet at the tap room and drink from 10 different bottles until they admit this is sub-par. My guess would be that it would take 3, maybe 4 small samples for them to say "uncle".

 

Add me to the list of people who got a bad bottle.
I got this response from Mike Hinkley:

So lets do some simple math here: About 6,000 bottles have hit the market, and they think only 1 out of 100 is "very high in diacetyl." That would mean about 60 bottles. I think we've seen close to that number of complaints on this thread alone. It is obvious that the percentage of bad bottles is much much more than 1 in 100. Either that or they know there are more bottles with diacetyl but don't consider the level to be "very high" or maybe don't even consider them defective at all.

In any case, I am patiently waiting to see how they will make this up to their customers.

 

Well I really hope that what this person told you is simply untrue. If a brewer knowingly shipped defective product, even after trying to fix it by blending "to smooth things out," that would be scandalous.

 

The Bruery did it. Albeit with a warning to the consumer.

 

I'm not sure how GF does it, but many breweries keep their "reference beers" and unsold stock in a walk-in cooler. If they've been refrigerated since bottling it would force the yeast into dormancy, in which case it's entirely possible that they are only experiencing a small percentage of issues compared to bottles that traveled across the country in unrefrigerated trucks and sat on unrefrigerated store shelves for 3 weeks.

 

All the more reason why they should assume that 1/100 from their own cellar is indicative of a much larger problem on store shelves.