Infection/Quality Problems: what we should know

On 3 occasions I have emailed breweries to let them know of iissues without asking for anything and each time they have offered to make it right.

Black Market Brewing - Infected bottle of Embargo, was offered some kind of credit at their tasting room or brewery.
Green Flash - Diacetyl ruined Silva Stout, received a generous box containing a replacement bottle and 3 other beers.
Breckinridge Brewing - Infected Twenty-Five, sent me a check for the full bottle price including tax.

Its up to the brewery if they want to do the right thing or not and thankfully it seems like many of them do.

 

I would add that if you send a polite, informative email to a brewery about a potential problem and they ignore you, then it's a sign they don't take quality control seriously and you may want to avoid their beer in the future. There's certainly plenty of craft brewers out there who do take quality control seriously and would appreciate your patronage.

 

18th Street had a batch of infected Coffee Hunters. I tweeted about it and they reached out to me and sent me a Cherry Hunter to make up for it.

I think we have to expect infection to happen from time to time. It's how the breweries respond that will make or break them. In the case of 18th Street they were great with their response.

There has been a lot of chatter regarding Coffee BCBS being infected and it seems like some batches did have an infection. I'll be curious to see how Goose Island handles it.

 

Well, I'm not gonna win popularity points with this one... Quite frankly, with some of what I have observed in a fair number of breweries and brewpubs, I am amazed that there isn't more of an issue with infected beer. Some of the things I have observed in commercial breweries would close down one of my processing plants from a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) perspective. Open doors, open windows, chemicals improperly stored, incorrect piping designs and layouts. Violations of "glass free" zone procedures. Unauthorized people wandering about. That's just stuff I can see, not the deep dive I'd do on an audit, and certainly not tearing into sanitation procedures, piping, equipment, and fittings looking for microbial hiding spots. I am admittedly critical because of what I do for work, but my research buildings get dinged on an audits for far more minor "infractions". We're not worried about organisms that cause illness either - just those that produce spoilage and off flavors - so it is mystifying to me how the "standards" could be that far different. I've seen people eating in breweries in production areas around open product - not the tiniest of breweries and one I happen to particularly love. That would get any of our employees three days unpaid vacation. So based on what I can observe on what amounts to a walk through, what else is taking place I guess is the point.

I know beer is somewhat forgiving and my point of view is probably overly harsh, but it is obviously not immune or this discussion wouldn't be happening. If you think about "wild" fermentation techniques like coolships or other ways to "naturally" inoculate the wort, how's that any different than brewing in a building with a 20 foot high garage door open on both ends and people wandering around the production area?

I'm not saying that people are intentionally negligent - we don't have to meet dairy standards in our plants, so maybe the requirements are even less stringent for a brewery. I don't know. But in my mind it isn't all that different. I believe I was involved in a discussion a few years back about standards in practice - I do believe there is a gap in that regard. Why wouldn't a brewery require similar procedures to any other food/beverage manufacturer? Maybe they do and they are in place. Anyone who knows please enlighten me, but observation says if such standards exist they are hardly applied everywhere.

I certainly applaud the efforts of those who are stepping up and instituting procedures and practices to prevent issues in the first place. I think there needs to be more of this. Even as forgiving as the product I work with is, nature finds ways to make life miserable for us. As good as our procedures are and our equipment is, we still run into nightmares.

@cavedave - In terms of "refunds" I've had only one incident with beer and Troeg's stepped up to the plate. It was DreamWeaver which is pretty unique and variable to begin with, but with a particular batch we noticed a pronounced sour taste we had not encountered. The rep brought me new beer to the store where I purchased it, asked a few pertinent questions, and took the remainder of the six pack back. I was polite, informative, and professional (having consulted with Quality on the other end of the 1-800-RANT line many times in my career). Same thing with a foreign material complaint in a bag of potato chips recently - what information do YOU need to help you resolve the problem and take care of business. We ended up with about six months worth of chips, but that is not my objective. As a professional in the food/beverage industry I understand the challenges and want to help as best I can, although I understand that I am not a representative consumer in that regard.

 

Barrel aged beers (those not intended to be sour - like stouts). Since things like Brettanomyces can live in wood, but are normally easily sanitized from a stainless steel tanks.

 

In addition, because barrels can have slight variations between them a batch of beer will often be a blend from many barrels to get a more consistent flavor across all bottles in the release. But the drawback is that one infected barrel could potentially ruin a whole batch of blended beer.

 

Great Thread @cavedave Surly Brewing had an infection problem with Anniversary Surly 8 and a flat Abrasive problem 18 months ago , they handled this with professionalism they asked everyone with a problem to contact them and they would answer and take care of the situation , they went above and beyond to handle this, so IMO civil responses between brewer and consumer will lead to happy endings.

 

What about beers that utilize fresh, undried hops? Would there be an inherent risk usng hops straight from the field? Or are fresh hops irradiated or treated in some other manner to control the microbial population?

 

So I visited a tiny brewery a few years back and sampled some beers right from the taproom. Pale Ale, American Blonde Ale, IPA and Amber was my recollection. 3 of them were sour and 1 tasted like bleach & chemicals. So determined that it was all infected and the owner realized this and did a feable attempt to try to clean the lines or something in the one that tasted like chemicals.

Question: So I don't think this brewer was doing any barrel aging or tinkering with wild bacteria/yeast strains to cross contaminate into his non-sour styles. What is people's best guess how did his steel fermenters etc. become infected with these standard beers he was brewing?

 

I've only had one infected beer, that I know of or suspect, Green Flash Cellar 3 Silva Stout. I remember a really strong butter flavor in the beer, it was strange. I will say that I don't think breweries should release infected beers.

 

If you contaminate one beer during fermentation, then re-pitch your yeast into other beers, you contaminate all your beers. There are plenty of other ways to screw up, though.

 

Infections happen post boil, so any hops or really any ingredients used in the brewing process are not the problem since boiling kills anything. It's during fermentation, aging, or bottling that sanitation or infection problems will get you.

 

There is still dry hopping though... no idea how they prevent dry hopping introducing something into the beer.

 

Someone, who sounded like he knew what he was talking about, posted in the BCBCS infection thread that these bugs live in clumps and are not dispersed throughout these beers. It seems to me that if that is true a QC operation would be challenged to nearly impossible to find these bugs and halt the bottling process.

 

https://byo.com/malt/item/568-dry-hopping-for-great-aroma Explains dryhopping while avoiding contamination

 

I found a week or so ago a Scuttlebutt IPA loafing around in the fridge, how long not a clue. On opening it literally exploded and it smelled putrid. I've had sour stouts, that had a bit of a cherry hit, Duck Rabbit again, drinkable though. Everyone's had skunked German beers no doubt.

I used to work for a Co based medical manufacturing firm. The products were gamma sterilized. Sounds weird but they also contracted out to sterilize a producer of chicken. Frozen in boxes which they sterilized too. Why not something along this line for beer, it kills the bugs without impacting the product.

 

Yep. Like not properly cleaning and sanitizing equipment common to all production. Wort coolers are a prime spot. If you get a seed colony growing in there, it can literally inoculate every beer you make. Hoses are another prime spot. The brewer may really conscientious and think they're doing an effective job cleaning. But if they don't validate their cleaning processes with microbiological testing, they're pretty much relying on hopes, prayers and good intentions.

 

I believe that was explored, and ditched by some major brewers. Something about marketing irradiated product probably made people flinch. And pasteurizing was so much easier.

 

This is still adding hops that have been dried. I am talking about the beers that use freshly harvested hops that have not been dried. A bunch of terms get thrown around, and I guess the closest would be fresh or wet hopping? I am not sure what the correct term is, but beers like Harvest Ale.