How do brewers blend beers for special releases?

I doubt that it's beer that's been returned. The labor alone to open that many bottles would be prohibitive. Then, there's the introduction of oxygen when opened. I suspect that when they brew the various beers, holding some for blending is built into the brew schedule.

Maybe they brew the various beers (in your example B-Bomb and Dark Star) to fit their packaging needs, then brew smaller batches to age just for blending.

Too bad Matt doesn't check-in here anymore, I'd like to hear his answer to this.

 

My sense is that the just brew extra (any manufacturing business should be producing some percentage above their expected demand just to account for out of spec product and to be ready to meet unplanned demand). I know that the Firestone anniversary beers are supposed to be based on a tasting and blending party of brewing and wine making people in Central California each year.

 

Every one of the old bottles would have to have the wax cut off, be opened, semi-gently poured into a new barrel/tank/whatever, and disposed of. That's gonna take a lot of hands to get it done in any kind of timely manner, and with labor costs being over $20/hr per person, just financially it wouldn't make sense.

Now, add in the time for the new blend to age in the barrel, the usual product loss during packaging, and the regular labor for packaging, and it just doesn't pencil out.

 

I can't speak for Fremont but in my experience with blended barrel-aged beers, especially Gueuze, the beer is kept in barrels until it is ready to be blended. You might run into a situation where it is stored in a stainless steel tank. There is often a fine line between storage and maturation and that is why barrel and cellar workers are as important as brewers.

When breweries have both a brewery and a barrel house, the barrel storage is often considered to be prime real estate. Depending on the location, barrels might be moved vertically in a barrel house so that they extract more or less from the wood in the barrel as the seasons change and the heat rises in the barrel house. Beers that need less extraction are kept to the bottom. When it is decided that a beer is finished it will be transferred to a stainless steel tank for blending.

There is a lot of care and front-end investment when barrels are concerned from legitimate breweries. It is far more likely that you are seeing a stored barrel that has been earmarked for a special occasion or blending later on than a repurposed pallet of bottles.

 

What's Seattle's minimum wage now, $17? And, there's still other work to be done; washing kegs, cleaning tanks, all the usual scut work.

 

I believe Abyss is blended with 2 or 3 different barrel aged imperial stouts. Haven't ever thought about it, but now I need answers!!!!

 

I'd wager something very closely approximating zero beer comes back in the form of returned bottles of barrel aged beer (barring infection based recalls for large batches)

 

Based on the ages you (and i) see of bottles in spots I think it just gets held until it does sell.

But in reality, anything that the retailer feels they can't sell is subject to the contract with the distributor and then subject to the contract between the distributor and brewer. My understanding is that the ability to even take something back out of retail (vs just destroying/draining it) is subject to state law. I'd bet a pretty penny that no one is legally dumping unsold bottles into blends for future bottles

 

Same shit with the Fremont Mezclar and whatever series they've been putting out in pint cans for the past year...they just released a half BA spiced Imperial Stout half Porter in pints ... keepem coming at 16 a 4 pack but drop the spiced crap

Seattle Hospitality Group bought them so they're dumping excess inventory before they focus exclusively on LUSH and Head Fulla Dynamite hazy lineups

 

I think breweries count on good beer in only like 60% of the barrels (going from faulty memory with that number), and the other 40% are soured by 'bugs' that got into the barrels before being filled. So there's always the possibility that if the brewery brews 1,000 gallons of a beer while expecting to get only 600 good gallons, and they purchase bottles and labels for the 600 gallons only to discover at bottling time that 90% of the barrels contain good beer. So they can only bottle the 600 good gallons and have to keep the 300 gallons of 'extra' good beer (dump 100 gallons of spoiled beer) until they figure what to do with it. If this might happen over the span of the release of two different beers, so why not blend the leftovers and release a new beer?

 

@OldSock is currently updating his thoughts on sour beers after 10 years since writing American Sour Beers after a few years as a commercial brewer. Check out www.themadfermentationist.com.

 

Well, at a certain beer store in my town, they just leave it in the cooler and when the next version comes out, they add a buck or two to the old one.

 

I remember reading during Covid that a lot of the keg beer from bars and restaurants was distilled into hand sanitizer. That’s probably as close as we’ll ever get to reusing an out of date returned product.

 

That's the shit that usually ends up on the clearance shelf. Beer can sit around on store shelves for a while but ultimately it sells. Sometimes stores will just lower the price to get it out the door