Corked & caged bottles leaked in transit

This is why many/most wine retailers don't ship in the summer and hold purchases until Fall. I am certainly against shipping corked bottles during the warm months and am not all that comfortable shipping other beers either (especially rare or hard to acquire ones)

 

From my experience, I would expect you are still fine.

Just because a little liquid escaped, doesn't mean oxygen got in.

Just my $.02

 

Heat was likely the issue (unless bad corking or excessive carbonation)... Liquid heats up and the air pressure inside the bottle pushes a little liquid out... But again, that is a positive pressure issue. If the bottles have carbonation then I would not worry about oxidation.

Extreme heat can of course damage the beer... but remember beer deliver trucks aren't exactly running with the AC on arctic and many breweries and distributor warehouses also get plenty warm.

Your beer is fine.

We had a Cigar City 110K Batch 2 not that long ago... Many of those bottles were way over filled and leaked a tiny bit during shipping (this bottle bubbled out and crusted up and looked just like your photos). This was 5ish(?) years ago... Years later the bottle was right as rain and showed no signs of oxidation when we opened it.

 

Is that a Milkman? I got one from a friend that looked just like that (no shipping involved, just full disclosure that I didn't actually purchase it). He also had one explode on him. I haven't heard any other reports of that happening, but just beware, it might be good to drink it soon.

I don't know if heat is neccessarily the issue, I got mine in the winter shortly after it came out.

 

I have had bottles I picked up at the store look exactly like that from a very local brewery here in PA. Not that it is extremely common, but I have seen this before. For what it is worth, they tasted perfectly fine.

 

Had a BA Bigfoot do the same thing when I got stuck at work late and it sat in my work van for a couple hours in the FL sun. The beer had expanded right up to the cork and, after an hour or so in the fridge, the fill level dropped by a good inch. Drank it within a couple of days because I didn't want to change it oxidizing.

 

Maybe 1/2 teaspoon pushed out. As long as no O2 gets in, "in theory" the bottle should be in the same shape as if the cork held fine.

 

I would say that those aren't good bottles to cellar either way, as they are both milk stouts, and the GBS relies heavily on the ginger, which falls off quickly. I opened a bottle of regular GBS last week that I have kept refrigerated since November and it was really not very good any more. I would drink them both now.

 

Interesting, as several of my most recent trades have included multiple Hardywood bottles (not Milkman) and I havent heard of any issues.
I'm not saying this to insinuate anything about your trader, just an fyi, I just havent had the same exeperience with sending roughly 10+ C&C HW bottles in the last 2 months. Maybe just luck.

 

Yeah I drink a lot of Hardywood and have only seen it once on the Milkman.