Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

Well, if you read back through the 23 pages of posts here, there is pretty clear anecdotal evidence that there is something wrong with the 21OCT15 bottles that were distro in Florida. Those bottles have made up the majority of the reports of infection and also have ratio of reports of bad bottles to good bottles (the vast majority of people in FL reporting on here that they drank a 21OCT15 bottle, report that it was infectes)

 

I have had 4+ bottles dated on 10/21 and all have been sour drain pours. My bottles with other dates were drinking just as they should delicious. Last night I opened a 11/04 expected it to be good and unfortunately that one too was sour. It wasn't as sour as the 10/21 but it is taking a turn for the worst and has the same sour smell and slight sour taste. I've had 2 regals so far both great.

 

these threads have definitely shined a light on the collective audience. coffee began with the same sort of defenses both from the source & the spectating crowd here. there was talk ad nauseam of batches & isolating them. it persisted even though it was painfully obvious & almost certain coffee was a single batch.

GI has an incentive to come up with excuses. the enthusiasts of BA though?? that GI wishes to avoid the topic of broad infection, makes sense. that the members here searching for, no reaching for alternative explanations & excuses asking what victims expect is sort of baffling. GI's opening positions on both coffee and barleywine were pretty much the same as their current position on regular. how'd that work out? it is only a matter of time before we exhaust the percentages & cases being sporadic enough to sit back with folded arms.

what seems evident at this point is something in the ingredients or final make-up of barleywine probably made it more susceptible or conducive to whatever contaminant(s) are at work. thus the issue was rapid & extensive. that makes more sense than this never ending novella of batches, dates, specific states etc. how many times are we going to try that? it's like syndication.

 

If I were GI, I would want those suspect bottles from Florida especially. Yet BAs here have offered them up and GI expressed no interest. That fact to me is quite telling. The first step in solving a problem is recognizing the problem exists.

 

Unfortunately, in corporate America the first step is meeting with your Legal Team to see how much recognizing a problem as a problem will cost.

This fiasco is snowballing to the point where Rare 3.0 will just be normal BCBS, but guaranteed not to have infection.

 

I'm not trolling here...but has anyone ever experienced a brewery taking up customers' offers to give them bottles believed to be bad? I know that at least one other Midwest brewery also refused, and I'm wondering if there could be issues with doing something like that. The first and foremost being that they have no idea of the provenance of those bottles that the customers have handled. That is all the more reason why I would think breweries would hold back a certain percentage of bottles from each batch/date - you figure they hold some back anyway for future events or their own curiosity, so making sure you have a wide array of samples would make sense. None of us know whether GI has done that or not - we certainly would assume they have, but we don't know for sure.

 

The Bruery gladly accepted samples of off flavored "So it happens to be Tuesday", not sure why others can't.

Anyone think that this years batches will come later then expected due to all of this?

 

That is not true. At least not in the corporation I work for (which is very large and gets much more scrutiny than InBev, although perhaps not on this forum ). Having Legal discussions certainly does come into play, but saying it's the first step is definitely incorrect.

 

yes. i have on 2 separate occasions.

 

the amount of S.H.I.T. in the market pales in comparison to the volume of BCBS

 

Since people are reporting bottles both good and bad of some bottles from the same batch and same time stamp another possibility is a sole bottle filler that wasn't properly sanitized

 

that's true. but what does that comparison have to do with the value of the offer?

 

My thoughts exactly. The source has to be something that effects some but not all of the bottles and crosses over to the other products involved in this.

 

I cracked an Oct 29 Barleywine three or four weeks ago - it hadn't turned and tasted normal. Also have had two BCBS since then, dated Oct 9 and Nov 4, which were also fine. My one bottle of Coffee, which I opened back in March, was wretched however.

All these have been stored at around 50 degrees or lower the entire time since Black Friday, the past two months in the refrigerator. Been moving all my 2015 Bourbon County in there as space opens up. Was hoping to put some age on the Rare, but that's now in the fridge too.

I have one more Barleywine and I'm not waiting much longer to drink it.

 

sheer magnitude. My bottle of S.H.I.T. was pretty damn good FWIW. Indiana only got like 20 cases. Indiana got 1000 cases just of regular BCBS.

 

i understand the 2 products are not comparable on a production scale. however, i think that has zero to do with the respective breweries' willingness to receive suspect bottles for the purpose of improving their own findings.

 

The big difference being anecdotal reports seem to indicate a large percentage of bottles of BCBS are still showing no signs of infection. This far after release, the difference in storage conditions prior to purchase should have a decreasing impact on the variance in bottle quality. This leaves open the possibility and provides support to options other than every bottle of every batch is infected.

 

Absolutely. You think Coca Cola wouldn't issue a blanket refund if they even thought that 5-10% of their product had soured?

Breweries shouldn't be able to skirt by just because we like them. If there's a problem, they should be accountable to fix it. It comes along with the territory of creating perishible products.

 

Last I checked, Coca-Cola doesn't have any active organisms included as part of the product that create this inherent risk in the product as time goes on. Coca-Cola being sour indicates something far different than a beer that sat in barrels for months being unintentionally soured does.

I also think there is no chance in hell Coca-Cola or any other huge corporation is going to issue refunds using the honor system the way Goose Island did.

 

That's kind of a moot point as there are plenty of companies that send out products with living organisms that would and should hold themselves accountable.

And I'm not asking Goose Island to use the honor system, but anyone who has bottles or a receipt should be taken care of immediately.