New Brewery - Bad Beer

I doubt there are many virgin prostitutes though

 

D. Fool me once...

 

OK Westbrook lovers-go easy on me..I live a mile or so from Westbrook. When their 'Batch One' came out it was awful...tasted metallic with overtones of some sort of cleaning solution...didn't try ANYTHING from them for a year;now their the most popular brewery in town with lots of great beers.

 

Personally, I checked that is go back in a few months, but given my most recent experience dealing with this, I would change my vote.

A nearby hrewery has been open a year, and any of my friends who've been there have spoken of how bad it is. I declined to go until two weeks ago, figuring their kinks were worked out, but that was not the case. Poor quality, low flavor, no aromas, like a 5 gal homebrew watered down and force-carbed. At this point, I will not go back until I hear someone raving about how things have changed.

 

Well shoot, sorry about that. Looks like I misunderstood what you were saying. I do agree that the current rate breweries are opening probably is unsustainable and that at some point some of these breweries will, unfortunately, have to fail. It sounds like the larger point you were making (hopefully I'm not putting words in your mouth) is that when push comes to shove, hopefully the public uses their dollars to vote for the breweries putting out quality beer on a consistent basis. And that when that happens, one effect will be higher quality beers overall. I think we both agree on that.

 

I have experienced this multiple times with new local breweries - and one that started off worst has actually become a quality juggernaut - so now I all about giving time.

 

This with the caeveat of my returning being months down the road.

I chose C but my irritation would not be over wastingmoney but over wasting a drinking session over bad beer.

 

I voted for tolerance and a return trip in 3 months, but in reality, I'll make a return trip if I am ever in the area again, which likely will be longer than 3 months because of travel distance. It's not too often that I find bad beer, even at new places, but I usually do not write a negative review here on the BA site as recognition that it isn't fair to do so at this point (if they are a new brewery).

However, if there are already BA reviews that speak of the beer as being good, I will write my opinion just to warn anyone else to expect the uncertainty of what they may find there. For these situations, I have returned to two places where I initially found poor quality beer and wrote a negative review, and I found that one was much better and one was no change. So sometimes new breweries just don't 'get it' even after a period of time gone by.

 

Say you go to a new restaurant. Your salad comes out brown, your steak that you ordered medium rare is well done, ingredients aren't of good quality, and your baked potato is hard and not cooked through. Do you chalk that up to growing pains and give them a pass too?

"Well, it's a brand new kitchen! They aren't used to the oven yet! The chef is used to cast iron. These pans are stainless!" How ridiculous does that sound? I understand there is a difference in the time it takes to brew a beer and cook a steak. But if you see fit to serve a sub-par product, I'll see fit to form an opinion. First impressions are the most important.

Some growing pains are understandable but if you are pumping out shit from the get go, in a few months, you'll only be pumping out slightly better shit. Unless there are personnel changes, breweries don't magically increase their quality that drastically in a matter of a few weeks. I may go back. I may not. But I don't expect to be back any time soon. There are too many breweries out there where I'd rather spend my money. I generally intentionally avoid new breweries for this reason.

 

IMO the owner or brewer of a new brewery should be willing to dump beer until he/she gets it right. It may be expensive but serving bad beer for any reason will end up costing you more.

 

This is the correct answer.

 

I'll give a new brewery a fair shake. If after a few tries they aren't up to snuff, I go elsewhere unless I hear they are doing better from people I trust. Though a local brewery should not expect me to continue to buy a dumb down American Pale Wheat Ale, when Live Oak Hefe is everywhere. So basically D for me.

 

South Carolina is full of crappy, mediocre and okay breweries. I'll support a local business, if I like their product(s).

 

If a brewery is knowingly serving bad beer (quoted from the OP "full of diacetyl, underattenuated, infected, or otherwise brimming with off flavors"), it says a lot about the brewery. If they don't care enough to serve a quality product then they certainly don't deserve any more of my money.

 

Are we really having a civilized conversation in this thread? Something is wrong here...very, very wrong.

 

Interesting how many more votes B is getting in beer talk than when it was in the Midwest forum

 

I would give them a few months and try again for several reasons. I don't know much about how you go from home brewing 5 gallon batches to brewing at the scale you would even at a brew pub, but I assume a new place is gonna have a learning curve. You gotta give 'em some time to get the quirks of the new setup worked out.

Second, I like to support local breweries, so I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt. There's some local places near where I live that are brewing world class beers. In some cases the initial brews were not spectacular, but they were solid.

Finally, I don't write off any place after one visit unless it's clearly a lost cause. I don't know that I've ever seen one that triggered that reaction for me.

 

I'm a fermentations science/ food science BS student in Colorado, and we had a class where everybody stated what they want to do after graduation. About 90% of the students stated "I wanted to open a brewery."

Here's the problem, are half of them good at brewing beer or knowing how to run a business? No.

So there is going to be new breweries popping up that stink. It's just what is going to happen.

 

Or, they don't know they're doing it. I'm not sure which is worse in this case.

I won't say I'd never come back to a place. A great example personally was Alewerks. I tried their beer first in 2008 and it was not good - some were downright bad. They had a LOT of issues but they got a new brewmaster who cleaned everything up, changed/dropped recipes etc. and by the time I got back to them in like 2013 I felt bad for carrying that negative opinion of them for so long. They definitely have a few world class releases at this point.

Another thing I fight though is the homebody love - just because people are raving about a new brewery doesn't really mean anything anymore. They're just happy they have a brewery close to them. I've been to places full of what appear to be happy locals where I did not enjoy the beer and wouldn't plan to go back (at least for a long time). But I'd never say "never".