Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

I for one still am not satisfied that the evidence doesn't exist. Your point that we would hear about it if it existed doesn't work for me. Here is why.
-We don't have every beer or brewery listed here.
-We don't have every beer drinker reporting here.
-We don't have an easy way to search reviews of those beers that are listed here to find out if there are reports of infection.
-No one has read all the reviews, including me, including you. I haven't read more than .1% (and likely far fewer)of them, and I am certain this is true for you as well.
-Not all beers are reviewed and in fact there are many that are only given number ratings that no one has reviewed, and therefore there is no way to know if a poor rating is a result of infection or not.
-You haven't given any indication of your method for determining whether more or fewer reports of infections exist, and especially not given indication that you even believe that to be an important point, other than your reference to us somehow "knowing about it" if it were true.
-And of course using not knowing something as a proof of its non existence is a logical fallacy.


A casual search of this site revealed a number of threads started about infections over the last year and a half. That said, I would be acting foolishly if I believed that these threads contain the total, or even more than a very small and uncalculable percentage, of all info about recent beer infections.

So again I have this feeling that I am missing something in your posts that would discredit my analysis. As many times as I have read them I can't find anything you believe that isn't lashed to the belief that we would know about all infections possibly caused by barrels of poorer quality that have passed through multiple hands on the way to the brewer. I can't get over my belief that there is no way we would or could know these things.

 

I had two bottles of prop and they were both unquestionably infected. It's been almost a month since the podcast, and there is still nothing having been reported on regular and prop and it's getting a little frustrating. I'm reading reviews of prop and I can't really fathom how it's still getting some positive reviews, but my buddy I shared my last bottle with loved the over the top sweetness. Having had infected coffee and barleywine they year, I knew the flavor profile and recognized it in Prop. It was still somewhat drinkable, but definitely not what was intended. The last few pages of this thread have been excellent reading from a lot of you guys who know what you're talking about in this instance. Wouldn't it be fair to think the issue is with the new bourbon barrels they procured this year and regal and rare have been ok because they used different barrels?

 

one data-point that is almost always missing from the equation is real knowledge of what a brewery pre-culled. we generally don't know what barrels & quantities were tossed before bottling due to off flavor or infection.

we are pretty certain this go around Goose Island tossed a good chunk of coffee variant because many of us have heard the same consistent details which appeared to be their staff providing a defensive explanation why there was so little coffee variant bottled & available. these details were not provided in an effort to make us aware there was a problem. the information was mainly an excuse. as the situation progressed the "excuse" had other implications.

that's to say, we don't know if they culled any Regal or Rare barrels. my dig that hasn't been received well by one of us, (GI made an error), it's still my feeling if enough coffee was "off" forcing them to reduce it to a single batch, they should have waited to determine exactly what was wrong with it before bottling anything. IIRC, my friend seems to think they probably know enough about tasting flavor profiles & issues, they're comfortable guessing what's wrong without waiting to reach a clinical conclusion. pretty obvious the failure to do so bit them in the butt here. i also feel like the build-up to their annual release date probably played a role in how much time they had on hand to play with product. others disagree. that's o.k.

 

No, my friend, you aren't missing anything but you do have a slightly different perspective than the one I am using.

We've been offered an hypothesis about what happened to GI. That hypothesis is based upon a plausible scenario in which several assumptions are made. The hypothesis and those assumptions require either that be there be additional evidence that the scenario is plausible or that the scenario represents a unique case unlike any other. Without such, the hypothesis remains unsupported and open to doubt and/or question.

The substance of my argument is that so far as I can see the hypothesis of what happened to GI, as it has been made has not been supported with other evidence which should exist if the hypothesis were true (e.g., similar infections). My list of things that would support that hypothesis is not intended to be exhaustive and there can well be other things that could be found/findable if the hypotheis is more plausible than others. No such evidence not involving GI has been offered yet. Similarly the hypothesis has also not been supported by the identification of conditions that would uniquely apply only to the case of GI and no other (e.g., the use of low end barrels is not unique when that has been relatively common with other brewers for a few years). So doubt remains, the hypothesis is open to question, and the burden of proof remains on the supporter(s) of the hypothesis.

BTW, you are abolutely correct that some of the evidence would be difficult to acquire and be certain of and you are spot on in saying that not knowing something as proof of its nonexistence is a fallacy. This is exactly I why I tried to carefully avoid saying that the absence of evidence made the hypothesis wrong, while indicating that such evidence could/would provide support. (Your point can actually be pushed even further to say that claiming an hypothesis has been proven is also a fallacy. One confirms or disconfirms hypotheses and does not prove or disprove them.)

You aren't missing anything anything at all about my argument except the perspective that it is not focused on proving something, it is focused on arguing that the plausible scenario lacks necessary support, i.e., there is a lack of proof. That means, in part, that the hypothesis/scenario should be treated as an hypothesis dependent on several unsupported assumptions. Effectively my argument offers a statement of a few of kinds of things that might be expected if the plausible hypothesis holds. What we are missing in the plausible hypothesis being discussed over the last few pages is any evidence that the things required for the scenario to have played out in the way proposed, thereby making hypothesis more plausible than, say, one of the conspiracy theories. (Also we want to remember that simply having an hypothesis fit most of the available data may make it more plausible but does not constitute proof either.)

At this point we know some things and others remain open to question. For example:

Are some barrels better at aging whiskey than others? Absolutely.
Are some locations in a whiskey barrel warehouse better for aging the whiskey? Absolutely.
Can barrels be contaminated with bugs and critters before their use with beer? Absolutely.
Can barrels be reused with beer and then show signs of contamination? Absolutely (indeed Cantillon and other lambic producers rely to a certain extent on the fact that some bugs and critters will remain deep in the pores of the wood even after barrels are steam cleaned and scrubbed to remove beer stone before reuse).
Etc.

Are low-end whiskey barrels less good for aging beer? Unknown.
Are low-end whiskey barrels more likely to be contaminated? Unknown.
Did some of the barrels sent to GI contain a unique organism that nobody else has or will have encountered? Doubtful.
Is discarding barrels of beer before blending to bottle unique to GI's barrel aging this year? No reason to think so either for GI or for other barrel aging programs. (Especially given reports over the years from brewers of discarding barrels of beer that were not up to standards.)
Etc.

 

tossing bad barrels is not unique to GI at all - that was exactly my point. what must have failed to get across completely about tossing barrels is it's entirely possible this issue doesn't have the expected history because in other instances the would be history may have been tossed in it's entirety, never completely showing itself. something GI tried to do (before it was properly diagnosed) & failed to accomplish here. the basic counter has been other smaller breweries would have made the same mistakes failing likewise. that's an assumption based on what though? it sounds a bit like a high opinion of GI being incapable of making mistakes that others wouldn't.

 

for me, it remains possible other brewers might not have made the same "mistakes". furthermore there's also the possibility there is a complete history of exactly the same thing happening with the brewing community not reaching the current conclusion. after all, until now the believed culprit was thought harmless. this suggests it's possible the culprit has been present in other examples/history but was dismissed as harmless. IOW, not considered a part of the problem.

 

=Drinking my first BCBS bought from NYC Whole Foods Bowery. It tastes great at first but kinda taste like sour and can feel lots of dark fruits. It's Oct.01, have to drink a whole bottle then I might find out.

 

maybe somebody scratched their butt and didnt wash their hands afterwords.

 

Had a bottle dated "Sept 22" tonight with friends. It was fantastic.

 

Split a bottle with a few people in my new apartment last night. Purposely didn't say a word about infection, and sure enough my uncle takes one sip and just looks at me oddly. Then just says pretty much what the hell is this, this isn't BCBS. Tasted thinned out, metallic, and had a sharp sourness on the finish. This sucks, I was lazy/too busy and never followed through with reimbursement for my barleywines/coffees. Not a big deal because I only found 3 total, but now all of my regular is likely shit as well.

What exactly is GI's stance on the regular BCBS, are they denying infection?

 

They aren't denying it - they are still looking into it. I know the time it's taking is annoying a lot of people, but not me. For reference, I just e-mailed them last week about the few bad bottles I've had, and this was my response:

Janet here with Goose Island. We take all claims of infection or off-taste very seriously. We appreciate your email and want you to know we are looking into it. Our quality assurance and quality control processes are critical to the complex portfolio of beers we release each year and we hold them to a very high standard.

I'm willing to give them time to figure it out, since it seems like it's a tricky situation. If they say nothing between now and November, then I may start to have different thoughts.

 

It's hard to say whether they will all be bad. I had a case of 10NOV2015 and when I noted one tasting bad I put the rest in the fridge. I had one last night out of the batch that was very good, others have been sour.

 

From the same case, mixed results? Interesting pattern, appreciate you taking the time to report.

 

Yeah I don't know what to make of it, there has to be some variable I can't explain. You'd think they would all go bad at the same rate.

 

Your case would include bottles that were filled by multiple bottling lines so one possibility is that it was a bottling line problem with a single filling tube/filler being contaminated and either not cleaned or the cleaning solution was ineffective against the bug causing the problem, but we don't really know very much definite yet about what was going on...

 

To paraphrase:
"Cutting costs (buying cheaper barrels) led to a lower quality product."
Who would have seen that coming?

 

There stance is
"We got your money sucker. F' OFF!!!!!!" or something like that

 

They've had a few months to work on this. Looks like they are waiting it out until early december

 

actually. to be fair. the real problem is their program went so big there isn't a supply large enough to suffice, period. the quantity wasn't going to be there. i could predict that much back in 2011.

 

Yes you did.
However I am not going to let something like the facts get in the way of my taking shots at AB/InBev