Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

Just drank a bottle from October 22. Tasted like sour cherry. I was having a good Father's Day up until this point.

 

Ya know Heaven Hill makes both high end and lower end bourbons. I find it difficult to comprehend that adding other distillers barrels to the mix makes it more likely to introduce bugs. Any one barrel could be the culprit regardless of brand.

 

since the early 2000s, along with some other like minded enthusiasts, i've been in the barrel purchasing game. i have a bit of an idea what Heaven Hill (& some other distillers) produce.

on making both high end and lower end bourbons; distillers such as HH distill spirit which they put it in barrels. how the bourbon matures after barrel entry dictates high/mid/low end. i doubt any distiller set's about "making" anything other than the highest-end product they are capable of. they wind up with lower end bourbon but it isn't because they "make" it that way intentionally or by design, as the statement suggested.

similarly, the majority of barrels (most bigger) distillers have on hand are not "brand" specific until actual dumping and bottling takes place. to actually be true to a "brand", the barrels that are dumped & bottled as a specific whiskey iteration, must then be trapped and kept together. compare original Rare to 2015 Rare. notice the 1st has an actual brand's name + age tied to it vs. the latter simply has the distiller's generic name + age tied to it?

since we've reached the point where we find it difficult to comprehend it seems pointless to proceed.

 

Despite your detailed knowledge of bourbon barrels and the accuracy of your comments, you've still not clearly explained why using barrels that matured the lower end spirits in addition to using the barrels that matured high end spirits would be more likely to create off flavors or infection in the beer subsequently matured in them. How is the presence or absence of a brand name tied to the beer related to off flavors or infection in that beer?

Color me dense if you will and write the question off if you choose, but without a clear connection I agree there's not much point in continuing to discuss or explore sourcing of barrels.

 

the problem is & possibly because it's become too "difficult to comprehend", but i didn't exactly say what you guys are hung up on. the other problem is to break it down to layman requires typing a novella & tldr. lemme try anyway. here is what some of you obviously read: mixing high end with low end = implosion simply based on mixing the two. that's a great simplification for what i was getting at.

before, GI use to exclusively use higher end barrels. those higher end barrels were originally the exact same production as many barrels that failed to continue to "high end", premium designations. those failures became lower end product usually yanked earlier on. 1 of the likely reasons for failures probably has to do with the integrity of the individual barrels, themselves. may be that adds understanding why brewers do chase specific brand names paying more to secure those barrels?

a brewer will chase 23 y/o Pappy Van Winkle barrels not solely to blast Pappy on the front/rear of the bottles, but also because of the knowledge they secured barrels that took on 23+ years of service & still turned out premium product. it stands to chance those barrels will also yield good end results once refilled with beer. in GI's case, i understood they secured 50 PVW23 barrels for the original Rare. i'm told that 49 of the barrels were bottled - 98% success. following me? lower end barrels may be more porous or subject to other integrity issues that prevented them from going further. more porous could, in theory, mean easier for unwanted things to get in just as much as interior contents getting out. in theory - right?

the other aspect i was getting at - before GI was single sourcing high end barrels. now they have a plethora of originating sources, many of which don't appear to have seen high end glory. so, aside from possibly having a bigger pool of barrels more likely subject to integrity concerns, they've simultaneously increased the number of paths for which they are securing their less integrity resources as well. point being they've multiplied their paths to more ((potential)) problems which you'll have to agree, i'm hoping at least on this, that it represents more angles to try & trace problems when going from having 1 single travel route leading in vs an artery with 6, 7 or more roads leading in.

again it's not specifically mixing low end w/ high end that i said increases risk. low end is possibly riskier. lots of sources streaming in likely increases potential risk too & certainly increases investigation paths.

 

This is the first time I've read you clearly suggesting in simple terms, without a lot of other uneeded information, the assumption/hypothesis that the low-end whiskey barrels and multiple sources were more likely to be carying bugs/critters responsible for off flavors and/or infections. So its not really so complex that it takes multiple paragraphs to explain.

If your hypothesis is accurate then that suggests a few things we should be or already should have been observing:

1. Since other brewers will have been forced to settle for using low-end barrels by the dramatic increase in demand for and pricing of barrels in general, those "low-end" brewers and sources will also be using more low-end barrels than in the past. Since those brewers should suffer the same problems as GI and we should be seeing a dramatic increase in beers from multiple brewers with off flavors and/or infections showing up after a few months on the shelves. Indeed the barrel shortage should affect low-end brewers quite a bit more than it has impacted GI. Breweries such as GI will have prior contracts or relationships and deeper pockets leading to the suppliers reserving for them pre-spoke high-end barrels since those brewers can afford to pay the supplier the higher prices required for the extra work in sorting/keeping segregated the high-end barrels in their warehouses.

2. There may also be an increased scarcity of bourbon barrel aged beers over the last few and coming months since larger numbers of brewers will be producing beers that have been aged in low end barrels from low-end suppliers that will have to be poured before bottling owing to those same factors that impacted GI.

3. Similarly, historically we should be able to find some evidence over the last few years that the frequency of barrel aged beers being dumped or showing up on shelves and then later showing signs of off flavors and infections has been increasing with the increased number of barrle aging programs. There has been increasing demand for barrels over the last 5-6 years, thereby increasing the likelihood that low-end barrels and multiple sources have been increasingly pressed into service.

 

I watched a show caller Bourbontucky I think it was. There's most definitely a different mash bill in between the runs and barrels, also a difference in aging. They most definitely according to this show don't all start off quite equal. I'm sure there's a sweet spot in the barrel houses where they place their most promising concoction, but according to this show hosted and narrated by the head distillers of a few top end distillers they most definitely don't start life equal. There's a difference between a 4 year old bourbon and a 9 year old. How this effects a BA beer program I have no clue. I doubt there's a great difference unless the barrels are especially hot, but they're blended anyway so I doubt it's an issue.

 

works if you assume every brewer big or small will make the same errors, ignore the warning signs (i.e. being forced to discard large portions before bottling), & still put out what may be suspect product possibly due to a target date etc.

what if most others successfully discard all of what is off beforehand like GI tried/thought it did? 1,2,3 goes out the window don't it?

EDIT: actually maybe just 1 & 3 go out the window...

 

there are different bills & recipes. for example a barrel of Buffalo Trace's (distillery not the bourbon brandname) ' wheated that can't make the Van Winkle hurdle, likely will be relegated to a lower tier. i.e. if do - able it probably will be folded into the Old Weller line which utilizes the same recipe. both designations begin the same. how the spirit matures dictates where the barrel winds up in terms of how high of a tier the end product is.

 

What if?

Well then they would have already made those errors. They would have not treated discarding a portion of a batch as a warning sign since it is common practice in barrel aging programs to discard barrel contents that test as off or infected. Then they would have still put out what was not known to be a defective product because it got a pass on " industry" standard testing procedures, I.e., test each barrel before mixing the contents in to a tank with other passes before doing the bottling run.

We want to keep in mind that GI was the first to release a barrel aged beer for commercial purposes, one of the earliest brewerys to run a multi year successful barrel aging program and helped " write the book" by having, over the years, released remarkably few beers that later developed off flavors.

 

probably missing my point. 1,2,3 doesn't apply across the board unless you are going to assume every other producer going forward falls prey to the same mistakes or oversights GI did this go around; whether those oversights result from legitimate undetectable issues or pressure & a rush to meet deadlines such as Black Friday releases. if the other producers exercise better QC there will be no visible correlation to witness. the correlation will be culled out of view as should be the case, just like GI tried unsuccessfully to accomplish when they discarded a major chunk of the coffee variant. the attempt later proved futile.

 

No, 1, 2, 3 are talking more about what we should be seeing right now and should have already been seeing in the recent past. If the GI problem stems from having to include low end barrels, the problems affecting GI now should already have shown up elsewhere. Quite possibly before it impacted GI since the barrel shortage that led to GI settling for using low end barrels started some years ago. Think of the GI label change you mentioned earlier. Many other Brewers have been using "Bourbon barrel aged" for quite some time now, despite the obvious marketing value of being able to say something like PVW barrels.

For more than a few years now some Brewers, in increasing numbers, have been settling for a generic assortment of Bourbon barrels from one of the Kentucky suppliers. As folks like GI made specific requests for certain barrels the percentage of low end barrels going out to other Brewers will have been increasing, especially in a period of a higher and increasing demand. For some years now, for Bourbon barrels, demand has grown while the supply has essentially been flat, even if only owing to the fact that it takes a few years for bourbon producers to ramp up their production when and if their demand for whiskey increases. Fairly constant supply in a time of increasing demand has meant higher prices for barrels in general as well as more low end barrels being sold to more Brewers who would settle for them because they had no other choice.

So 1,2,3 are primarily about the present and the recent past.

We don't need to make assumptions about GI quality control or time pressure now or in the past or future. Other producers will have already been making those errors and oversights because they won't have known that a bacterium widely thought not to have any effect turned out to have one. This is something that would have happened to other producers before it showed up with GI since others will have led the way in using more generic low end barrels.

 

I am interested to know what facts led to these, and your other, conclusions? Could you link to the list of all infected BA beers pulled recently before distro, and all BA beers that were distributed and showed infection recently, and all BA beers in past that showed infection but were pulled first, and the list of all those BA beers that were distributed in past and showed infection? Perhaps we will reach the same conclusions you did after we look at these lists. Then we can move on to better avenues of inquiry.

Or am I simply not understanding here what is normally an obvious degree of logic and facts in your other posts?

 

No, actually I can't link to any facts at all about infected beers pulled before disro and/or that were distributed and developed the type of problems GI has had. Furthermore I don't think that any one else is able to demonstrate that either. That is basically my point.

If the GI problem were simply a contamination from starting to rely on low end Bourbon barrels and relying on more than one source of supply, such problems with beers would have already existed and happened (or be about to happen) for several other brewers. Some such evidence should already exist and be findable outside of GI. (e.g., We have no shortage of BAs reporting on buying "infected" beers. ) However, there seems to be little or no such existing evidence that anything like what has happend to GI has happened to a noticeably large number of other brewers.

So in other words, if the problem were simply from using low end barrels we should already have heard or had access to multiple reports of barrel aging programs run by other brewers putting out bottles that developed problems that showed only months after being bottled. Especially from breweries other than GI with considerably less experience at barrel aging who've not ever been able to afford the luxury of paying the extra costs required to obtain a particular subset of high end barrels as GI has been in previous years. (Some of them will have gone into barrel aging without even realizing you could pay extra and get barrels from one particular brand of bourbon if you found the right Kentucky-based barrel merchant. )

So I'm basically saying that if the problem at GI simply originates from starting to use low end barrels from multiple suppliers the evidence referred to above should already exist. It doesn't seem to, but it should. Add in the discovery that a bug previously thought to be harmless in beer has now been reported to be at least part of the overall problem.

Therefore I have strong doubts that low-end barrels from multiple sources is the cause of the problem, just as I doubt that GI was guilty of a lapse in known and accepted quality control procedures. (Some of which they helped develop and will have been through before more often than some breweries have done any barrel aging at all. )

Bottom line, the logic is, if A is correct then we should also find B and/or C and/or D. (Possibly all at once.)

We have not yet found evidence for B, C or D so we can/should question whether or not A is correct. At a miniumum there is something else going on here so we don't have a completed puzzle. (And we may even have something like a jigsaw puzzle where some extra pieces have been thrown into the pile. )

 

Without addressing anything else, I think one of @Highbrow's main points about high vs. low-end bourbon barrels was that since many distilleries don't start out with a different recipe for their low and high-end bourbons, the barrels are vetted based partially on how well the barrel is holding up over the years (which is also partially a product of where in a barrel warehouse said barrel is, I believe). The thought being that if a barrel is showing signs of breaking down, it won't be used in the "high-end" portion of the distillery's stocks (i.e. the example where Buffalo Trace/Julian Van Winkle takes the "choicest" barrels from their wheated mashbill, puts them in specific areas of their warehouse, and continues to age them for 15, 20 and 25 years as Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, and the less choice barrels end up being the younger Weller line). So the idea is that some of the lower-end barrels may be breaking down/subject to flaws in a way that higher-end ones wouldn't, which could introduce an unpredictable element into the barrel-aging process of Goose Island.

Not my words or thoughts (since I just drink the stuff, I don't think about it ), but I believe that was one of the main points in the high vs. low debate.

 

Is there a way that some one can test and say it was "this bug" that infected this beer?

 

besides the solid info @SeanBond added, it is not inherently true that "high end" has to do only with how long spirit is in a barrel. for example, Blanton's is considered at the higher end of the spectrum in the Buffalo Trace distillery portfolio. it is on average only about 7 or so years old. there's a target Iron Clad warehouse they age barrels intended for the product. they pick the premium, (also known by many distillers as "honey") barrels. the barrels that aren't in profile are rejected & generally go on to be utilized in other brand names & in this example are generally older in age by the time of usage.

it is however typical that higher-end brands tend to contain older spirit. but focus on the fact higher end usually consists of barrels that are clearing hurdles that otherwise forced sibling barrels out of the running & into bottling brackets beneath i.e. "lower end". also, please note when i say lower end here, that does not have to mean absolute bottom shelf trash. we're talking whole spectrum. but you have to ask yourself, what forces the producers to designate barrels to lower end product? there's often a reason they are getting the spirit out of the barrels earlier & opting to place them in lower brands. to piggy-back, this is speculation but likewise, knowing how barrels situations work, if i had to offer a hypothesis how things went with GI it would go similarly. they probably discovered coffee was not doing well in the barrels. they discarded a bunch. knowing something wasn't working they opted to bottle that variant first - not to risk contaminating the entire release, but to immediately get it the fvck out of the barrels before more went wrong/bad. just like a distiller would do. make sense?

note i did not say that this is exactly what has happened. i'm simply offering some logical points.

 

Wouldn't the most important part of the barrel's life have to do with what occurred with it from the time the bourbon was removed until the brewery received it and filled it with beer. I think that is where you have the most chance of something bad occurring. If the distillery didn't seal the barrel back up and treat it properly, then I think that is where you have a chance for some type of bacteria to take hold.

 

lol. wait. so basically you're saying my logic is screwed because there'd be evidence of the same happening to others, but that you can't prove or be certain it hasn't actually happened before to others? isn't your whole argument : if it were these factors, we'd know because there'd be a documented history of it occurring with other breweries? not to mention a bit down the page you also mention the now known problem was previously believed harmless & hence would not be considered an issue until just now??

you expect to find a historical trail of that which wasn't yet discovered/concluded? & in your mind, there's zero possibility the issue has actually been in other spoiled beers before but believed to be harmless & therefore ruled a non factor?

you also realize no matter what the source turns out to be, your : "why haven't we seen it in other examples" will still apply the same way? therefore i expect when GI comes out with its explanation you will have your foot in their ass for a week or so peppering them with questions why there is no history to back up their conclusion. don't worry. i'll wait. forever.

 

Actually, I'm not saying your logic is flawed, I'm saying your logic, based on assmbling partial information, tells us that if your hypothesis is correct then there should be other evidence that such things have happened before since the conditions you stipulate in support of your hypothesis are pre-existing conditions. Barring that you need to explain why the GI situation is sui generis (in a class by itself) and will not have happened before. Since you haven't done either, your hypothesis remains unsupported by any evidence beyond your proposing that a pattern has been found. Finally, it is not incumbent on the skeptics to prove someone else's hypothesis for them. It is for the proposer to provide additional reasonable evidence.

As stated above, I have no expectation what so ever that a historical trail will be discovered, I'm simply asking you to provide us with reasons to believe your hypothesis other than the fact you know a lot about barrels and are inferring and proposing it in the first place. As for the organism previously thought to be harmless, it is one more reason to think your assumptions about sloppy quality control or rush to market are not applicable. One can not institute quality control that defends agains any and all possible unknown dangers.

As for your last paragraph, when GI comes up with their explanation, I'll most likely evaluate what they say, fit it into my thinking, and move on with my life with either increased knowledge or increased doubt, after figuring out where and how my thinking and undertsanding worked and/or did not work. Finally you can rest assured that despite the temptation to do so I'll not defend my ideas, correct conclusions, or errors by engaging in the fallacy of an Appeal to Ridicule.

Enjoy the rest of your day.