Bruery Autumn Maple 2012 Soured?

Not necessarily. I should of said that the quality may go down. It just seems like there's more problems lately with some of the brewery's making beer. Alpine is one that recently has had some problems on their production line. I think Kern was another that had some issues. And Alesmith another. Not sure if its a contamination issue or a recipe issue or a production line issue. But it cant be the same all the time as the big three. The smaller brewery's will have some kind of issue in their lifetime. The good thing is, it is found and resolved.

 

The bottle I opened on Thanksgiving was fine.

 

Complex question. For us, the more we have grown, the more resources we have for quality assurance. We're tracking quality at every step of the process now and we continue to invest in this. When we started, we could only afford to track a few aspects. Overall, our quality has improved dramatically as we've grown. It isn't necessarily true that every brewery invests in quality assurance when they grow, so there may be some instances of quality going down as breweries increase capacity as they may not be able to keep tabs on where new issues can occur with new equipment.

At the same time, growth means we have more batches out there than we've ever had, and statistically there should be more issues (by # of occurrences, not by %) happening than before if quality assurance isn't growing at the same rate as production. I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air, but for example, if out of every 150 batches had 1 significant issue and our quality assurance methods stayed consistent and kept up with the pace of production, and we produced 150 batches last year and 300 batches this year, we'd likely have 1 issue in the year with 150 batches and we're likely to have 2 issues in the year of 300 batches if our quality remains static between those periods. Perception-wise you may think we have greater issues this year than last year because we had 2 issues instead of 1, but in actuality that wouldn't be the case. This is oversimplifying the issue, as our quality assurance methods should tell us when we have a problem before the beer is sold. Ideally the public would never have to have a beer that is not to our quality standards. In this case something fell through the cracks.

We seek to continually improve quality, and issues like this while unpleasant, teach us about our methods and where improvements can be made.

Cheers,
Patrick
The Bruery

 

Thanks for the reply...now, care to tear the shroud of mystery over when we can get our hands on our Grey Monday?

EDIT: Actually took the time to read your post this time around. Very well-reasoned and to the point. Appreciate the information.

 

I don't remember hearing about this. Which of their beers had issues?

 

We had a bottle of this years batch last week, definitely soured, but very pleasant. I enjoyed it more than I did last year actually, and plan on picking up some bottles. Blessing in disguise? I do enjoy it without the slight sour notes also, one of my favs from the Bruery actually.

 

The fact that you still respond to these threads with information goes a long way towards making up for any QC issues that may get out of the brewery (which are few and far between, anyway). I still remember that you responded to the thread about flat Autumn Maple in '08 on the old forums, there aren't many brewery owners who bother engaging the forums to openly discuss issues like this, and it's appreciated.

Tangential to that, I opened an '08 AM a week ago and it was extremely delicious, and had developed some nice carbonation over time. If anyone else is sitting on that first batch, I doubt it's going to get much better.

 

The batch distributed to Bevmo in Turlock CA. Smelled like an awesome pumpkin ale, but tasted like a spicey, sour green apple. I figured it was just the yeast.

You may want to get in contact with their distributor.

 

So I could accidentally get a bottle of S.A.M? Sweet.

 

Same in Tracy. I thought it was the yeast and it turned me off to the beer. Almost was a drain pour for me. Not a fan of pumpkin ales but this seemed real good and I got a sour pumpkin beer. Nothing against sours but the flavors didn't mesh well

 

My first sip was yammy goodness, but then it took a nose dive to sour apple. It wasn't bad enough to drain poor, i think i even gave it a higher score then saison rue and mischief. But i bought those at the same bevmo at the same time, so maybe they were all infected. Sadly this was my first experience with anything The Bruery...I kept thinking to myself "somethings not right here" apparently the force is strong with me.

 

Hey All--

After researching complaints of sour Autumn Maple bottles, it appears that a small number of cases from two bottling runs were contaminated with a spoiling organism. Rest assured the beer is safe to drink, but obviously it does not taste how we intended. We are still unsure what exactly may have caused the issue, but contaminated bottles or caps are the most likely culprit as the entirety of each batch was not affected. The two affected batches are date stamped "091712 LOT648" and "091812 LOT649" on the back label, although only a portion of each batch is infected so your bottle may be just fine. If you've had a bad bottle, please email [email protected] with details (preferably with a picture of the date stamp, if you still have the bottle) and we'll be happy to refund or exchange your bottle, subject to the laws of the state in which you bought the beer.

We apologize for this inconvenience, and appreciate your understanding as we work through this.

Cheers,
Patrick
The Bruery

 

not sure if I got lucky or if the last digit didn't transfer since my bottle is dated 091712 LOT64

 

Yes, sometimes the last digit doesn't get imprinted. You have one of potentially infected bottles, curious to hear whether it is sour or not.

 

Hmm, not seeing anything stamped on the back label...

 

Where should this stamp be?

 

Patrick, you're the man.

 

That's a good sign, Chris. Bottles without a date stamp haven't been found to have any issues. Our date stamper tends to work for a few weeks, then crap out, so not all of our bottles are bottle dated at this point. It'll be in the little white box down towards the bottom of the label.

 

FWIW, a coworker of mine drank an infected bottle last night and said it was F**KING AMAZING. So we're gonna search our shelves now and see if we can find more.

 

Yep, it was damn good infected. I hope to see some too, sit on them.