Bourbon County Coffee 2015 - Gusher?

Agreed. And all the types of post I listed above are equally useless / lazy / off topic.

Conversations around what you perceived, what made you think infection, etc... Are legit. Blanket statements of "its not infected its just the coffee" are passé. Equally useless as the "mine is infected" with no details

 

I thought I saw a link a week or so ago of a list of infected/non infected bottle times. Can anyone repost it? I can't find it. Thanks!

 

I had the same experience with the lingering taste in my mouth. Not a big deal, just disappointing.

 

I've got to be careful here to not fall into any of the aforementioned categories we're not supposed to talk about!

I had my first bottle last night, and the odds apparently were in my favor. Bottled on 9/17 with time stamp of 1739, this did not gush at all and was not overcarbonated (I actually thought it was slightly less carbonated than expected). It had a very strong coffee aroma, and the flavor was coffee along with the fruity flavor, but not sour. I don't recall getting as much of that fruit flavor when I had it on draft a couple times, but I also drank a boatload of beer after trying it on draft those times so my memory is a bit sketchy. I still have one other bottle that I will save for farther down the road and hope luck falls on my side again.

 

I'm not sure folks are really suggesting it isn't, at least, not the entire lot of it.

It's not at all inappropriate to tell someone who's getting fruit notes off this beer and claiming infection that it might not actually be an infection they're tasting. I know it sounds wild, but there just might be some folks posting that their beer is infected that can't tell the difference between an infection and the intended flavor profile of that coffee...

Which discussion would you rather take place? The one where homebrewers tell Goose what's wrong with their beer? The one where we all blame a megacorporation that has little if any direct influence over the product we're talking about? The one where we keep throwing bottling dates/times at the wall and say it wasn't infected but then 3 posts later someone else says it is?

 

Based on all this, if you happened to find bottles of BCBCS or BCBBW on a shelf somewhere, would you still buy it? I've always really wanted to try the coffee, but would have to pass I think, it just doesn't seem like it's worth the risk.

What about the others, like regular or Rare? I haven't heard any complaints about BCBS, and I assume thousands of bottles of that have been opened, plus I've had a couple bottles myself that have tasted incredible, so I'd still happily buy it. But with Rare, I wonder how many bottles have even been opened so far--how many people bought it with the specific plan to age it, or trade... Is it possible if Rare was being consumed at the same rate as the coffee or barleywine, that there would be similar reports of infection with it? Given the reports of infection in those two, and the extremely high cost of Rare, I honestly don't know what I would do if I came across a bottle for sale.

I'm not trying to start a panic or make people run to crack open their bottle of Rare to check it for infection, like it seems has happened in both this and the barleywine thread; I was just trying to decide what I would do if I came across any of these bottles, and with Rare especially, I'm torn--without the fear of infection, I would have pulled the trigger and been thrilled to have the opportunity to try it, but now I'm not so sure. Has anybody else thought about this? What would you do?

 

I wanted to touch on something that, I hope to God, was not mentioned and gets me strung up and it's why I think that this infection is worse than if it happened at other craft brewers - especially in my area (North Jersey, NYC, lower NY State). Around here a lot of stores were packaging Coffee and BW with having to buy a set allotment of regular BCBS or other Goose Island products. Even if Goose Island offers a refund for the infected bottles, I highly doubt they would comp you a 'package' you had to buy and blame the store you were at. The stores, at least on Black Friday, past the blame to the distributors for making them buy X amount of Goose Island in order to receive X amount of Bourbon County. The distributors in turn blamed InBev/Goose saying they have the same restriction from them (buy X of the core and get X of the specialty).

My biggest problem with this infection isn't that it occurred, but the hoops that InBev (from what store owners and distributors told me) put in place to get these 'special' beers -- many of which led to the consumer buying more InBev beer that they might not normally purchase. I will also say if the rumor of Goose Island knowing about an infection in the Coffee Stout, which led to dumping some, is true I will be really angry. If you are already aware of an infection before release, then there is really no excuse to release any infected product.

 

Honestly, if you want the beer, buy it. Don't let an infection scare you off.

Pretty sure Goose Island/<your local Goose distributor> are not allowed to dictate the terms of sale for your local shop/bar. If your store told you that you had to buy 4 bottles of BCBS to get a BCBCS (hypothetical) that's the store's policy..

Now what does absolutely happen is distributors and breweries rewarding top accounts with additional product. If you sell more Goose, you'll get more Goose. That really has nothing to do with the customer side of things though. Completely on the bar/store.

 

I am not trying to be a dick, but what exactly is the difference, at this point, if someone mistakenly, or justifiably, identifies a beer they just consumed as infected?

The batch is infected. This isn't in doubt. Or is it to you?

So, curious to know what the exact point is of wondering if folks are misidentifying some bottles of an infected batch of beer?

The discussion I would like to take place is one where we can share info that can be useful to folks to get refunds, and share the tasting and bottling info from their bottles that they believe are infected, or good, and convince everyone it might be best to store their possibly infected beers in the fridge and consume soon.

 

As previously noted, Goose Island doesn't really tell their distributors "to get Bourbon County, you also need to buy X". I think that might be illegal in some (all?) states.

But at the end of the day, Bourbon County is an allocated product. They have to decide where it goes because for the most part, distributors, stores, etc will assuredly order more than they are able to give them. And like many brewers, they allocate that product by looking at which accounts sell the best over the past year (or specified time period).

If some stores want to try and bump their sales of other beers in the hopes of being in a better place to get more Bourbon County next time around, then that's their own decision and policy. It may seem like splitting hairs, because at the end of the day, getting Bourbon County is somewhat dependent on the sales of other beers, but there is a difference between telling a purchaser they have to buy X to get Y and saying, "hey, you sold a lot of X last year, here's some extra Y". The analogous situation on the retail level would be a store tracking purchases from their customers over the previous year and giving first option to purchase to those who spent the most money at the store.

 

Not sure what finance class you took, but growth does not equal value.

 

Two things to add into your thinking. Those "hoops" for the stores and distributors are not unique to GI and quite common across the industry for being able to buy harder to get beers (e.g., in PA Bell's Hopslam, some Founders beers are allocated to distributors and retailers on the bases of sales of other beers from that brewer and so exactly the same way) and the bundling at stores where you buy is a store decision.

Second, it is possible that even if a brewery dumps one batch for being infected there's another with no infection detected (by taste or lab testing). So that batch will be bottled and shipped. Occasionaly those tests will miss something until after the beer has been in the bottle for days, sometimes even weeks and again this is not something that has happened only to GI or only one brewery. Not too many years ago there was an infected batch of Two Hearted where the infection did not show up at all until the beer had been out on the market for a while.

 

If this was last year, I would have completely agreed with you about this being a distributor or store issue. After seeing InBevs proposed bonus incentive to distributors, I am thinking more of the blame may land on Goose and InBev for the allocation. I am going solely based on what the stores and distributors are telling me, which I realize may not be the full truth.

 

I think it's probably a bit pre-emptive to call the whole batch of BCBCS a wash. Clearly, we've got a lot of bottles that are bunk, but there seem to be a lot drinkin pretty well also. I cracked one on NYE and it was fine.

We've gotta be able to cut through false positives from folks who are labeling it infected based on intended flavor if we want accurate data. If people are worried about their beer having an infection.. regardless of date.. go put it in the fridge. But really, that's not gonna stop it. So what we really need to do is wait for Goose to tell us what to do.

Sucks, but.. thems the digs.

Store allocation is absolutely something the brewery and distributor can drive. It happens all the time, even across breweries within the same distributor. If you sell a bunch of distributor x beer, regardless of brewery, you'll get more beer from them in general. There's a bar locally here that keeps 3-4 handles basically dedicated to a specific distributor and they always end up getting all of the special releases from the brands that distributor carries.

Bundling though... That's a store thing. At least, as it pertains to you walking in and buying something. The brewery/distributor can't dictate that. As was said before, I'm pretty sure that's illegal. It's entirely possible that a store could say "well we had to buy extra Goose to get this so you need to buy extra Goose to get this too" but... again, that's the store running a screw job on you and shifting the blame up the chain because they know there's nothing you can say or do about it.

 

"Perceived value by investors" - that better?

 

There are always some drinking fine, some haven't showed fully, some more mature infections, for many reasons already described here and elsewhere.

I guess my main point is how do you cut through the false negatives/positives? Shall we elect you to judge? And if the batch itself is already judged infected isn't it time to stop trying to determine if the batch is infected?

The discussion should be we should point out what we taste as best we can, post the pertinent info about date and time, and keep each other informed about info gleaned from Goose Island, and additional bottles opened, and move our beer into the fridge/consume soon.

 

AB/InBev has jacked up the price and shipped out an infected product. If one chooses to stand camp out all night for the privilege of purchasing same, that is their own fault.

 

You obviously have no idea about finance or investing so I won't even argue with you. Carry on.

 

I'm not saying that the manufacturer (brewer) has no role in how allocated beers are doled out--in fact, I think they do. I think they allocate to their distributors based, in part, on which distributors move the most of whatever product in their portfolio that they want to move.

My point is that there is a stark difference between rewarding an account based on past results and bundling two products together.

I'm not sure how the distributor incentives even factor in here other than a very general notion of there being rewards for desired sales outcomes (which again fits more with the model of rewarding an account for good performance than it does with bundling two products together)

But now I'm being a bad commenter again. I already helped take this thread off the rails once, so this will be my last comment about how BCBS is allocated.

Getting back on track: I'll be opening my bottle of BCBCS this weekend and will post my findings/results.

 

Ouch nailed me with your pithy retort. Oh the burn. Good thing you put me in my place about high finance on a thread about beer infections.