Bourbon County Coffee 2015 - Gusher?

I love how y'all keep throwing around the word sour, but also buttery in the same sentence.
SMS was not infected, last year. Yeast was very active and continued to bring the beer to an over carbonated point after a month or two. Nothing was tart, nor sour, just thin.
As for your buttery BCBCS, "buttery" is diacetyl and that's typically an off flavor in Lager yeast that is pushed out by allowing the beer to ferment for a few extra weeks over the full bounty of yeast and then totally muted during the actual Lagering stage. Sour is a possibility, but buttery sounds ridiculous.

 

See last year's Silva stout to see how a non-lager becomes a diacetyl bomb

 

Ridiculous? Not at all. Improper fermentation -- even with an ale yeast (they all give off some level of acetolactate. I'll skip the sciencey stuff. Google it) -- will do it. Beers infected with lacto or pedio can both turn into diacetyl bombs as well, as both of those bacteria both produce it.

 

Had a bottle of 1848 this weekend. Tons and tons of coffee and thick as all get out. Delicious and no infection.

 

For what it's worth, I just spoke to someone at GI this morning. Appears they are still in info gathering mode (asked me a bunch of questions about my bottle/experience, etc.). They didn't commit to anything at this point other than saying they are in the process of looking into it and once concluded they will contact me. I asked about time frame and they said they didn't know.

 

So, are most people holding out on drinking the rest of their bottles until hearing what GI's official response is? I had planned on drinking one of my two bottles soon, but not I'm unsure whether I should keep them both unopened until they come out with a stance on this.

 

Yeah mine had a sour cherry tartness. It actually wasn't awful, but that taste was definitely there.

 

Given the price, I'd recommend people just keep theirs in the fridge and wait to see if GI is refunding. Would you really want to drink a C- $18 stout?

 

I asked if I should hold off on drinking any of my other bottles until I hear from them, and they said to feel free to drink them if I wanted, but hold onto the bottle. That said, given they didn't commit to actually doing anything at this point (refund, etc.), not sure what that really means.

 

they have one brite?

 

After drinking a good bottle on saturday, I tried another last night with the same time stamp 9/17: 1732. This one foamed a bit before pouring, reaching the lip of the bottle, and tasted quite different from the earlier bottle-coffee still present, but very little barrel and slight sourness-not horrible but not very good. This bottle was refrigerated much later than the first, so storage really seems to be a factor. Unfortunate, since my other bottles were not refrigerated.

 

If I had any, I'd return any unopened bottles to the store or distributor. I've done that before with other infected beers. Never had a problem. Everyone can just jam it back up the supply chain.

 

You don't think the LARGEST brewing company in the world can afford to issue a recall and/or refund in order to save face?

 

No idea - could have used multiple tanks, and no idea if they have more than one bottling line that can handle the new bottle shape either. I assume since the only information on the bottle is date and time that they bottle sequentially on a single line, but they could have multiple tanks and switch over from one to the other (it would certainly be more efficient).

 

Hopefully they have sampled several from every single timestamp and deduced the batches that got hit...and are at this point, trying to figure out a course of action for those affected.

I'm actually getting a bit pissed over the non-response at this point.

 

Pedio can create diacetyl and lactic acid, so the two together can be an indicator of a pedio infection. In intentional sour beers brett typically "cleans up" the negative byproducts of pedio, I believe diacetyl being on of them.

 

i would imagine they have some sort of insurance? is that common in the beer industry?

 

I wouldn't have expected anything sooner. I'm pretty sure they want to do a thorough analysis, which takes quite a bit of time, and then remediation (if there is any) takes a bit of time to be figured out and approved.

I'd say there should be a response by the end of the month before I started to get annoyed.