Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

Good news, amigo... this will help you get ready for the real world. Most of your dreams and aspirations will fail to meet your expectations too, so don't let one funky bottle of beer get you down too much!

Cheers!

 

You're in Illinois, so the chances that you got a bad bottle of BCBS seem to be low (it seems to mostly affect Florida and nearby distribution). There's a whole thread on bad Coffee and Barleywine, and Rare is 2 year Bourbon County, so if last year's batches were affected, Rare would not be. There doesn't seem to be much consensus on Regal or Prop.

 

My buddy and I have plans for a full 2015 BCBS lineup tasting with all of the bottles (even BW and Coffee, which are near locks to be duds). It will be an interesting experiment - the Prop is the one I'm most intrigued to taste. We just have to get around to actually doing the tasting.

 

Opened a BCBS last night, tasted great despite Caps loss. I think I have 15 bottles left and I'll drink all but 1 or 2 in the next few months, just in case. I don't really "age" bcbs anyways, usually just try to make it last until the next release.

 

a lot of people have indicated Prop has already begun spoiling. there is some argument of people not understanding it's ingredients & that it might just be mediocre based on their dislike of said ingredients. it would appear some people are beginning to claim Regal is tasting funny too.

we've gone through the motions multiple times to point out the problem can't really be looked at or assumed to be separated by any batch type concept. to again illustrate the point, the stouts might be looked at for batch or shared origin being some variable. barleywine being a completely different beer from the start to finish, placed in second use (by GI) barrels tells you forget the batch idea. the problem jumps the "batch" firewall concept just on basic logic if one simply takes the time to sort out the logic.

 

I tried to pull the same thing together over here. I couldn't find anyone with a prop though. I drank my only regal. I have one BW left that I purposely saved to do a BW vert some day to see just how different it becomes from the good stuff. All of my regulars have been fine so far.

 

Yeah, I had a Regal at the beginning of Feb that was fine, but the only Prop I've had was on tap at GI's taproom. The one bottle of regular I had was maybe a week after Black Friday, so there's no telling what's happened in the meantime.

 

It seems the problem is only in the bottles right? Kegs have all been fine from what I've heard, even Coffee and Barleywine. If that's true then the bottling line could be the problem, lines not thoroughly cleaned after bottling a sour, or even the bottles themselves were not completely sanitized. If that's the case then even Rare could develop a problem.

 

you may very well be right about the areas the problem affected. if the problem originates prior to the delivery/bottle equipment segment, well, then we better get on our knees & pray cause there's also the reality that this years could be resting in the environment responsible for last release's issue.

i'll add this though. from what little i gather, kegs seem to be maintained at a much different level than general public, bottle distribution. that's important. because, besides possible varied levels of the issue presence in individual bottles, the other obvious common factor separating 1 case to the next is the manner in which product was handled the 7+ months since release.

the same concept is a problem with GI responding to customers with "Their brewers tasted and tested the product". the product pool they're sampling from has never exited their own environmental control. the general public's pool has been all over the country passing through various handlers along the way. this is mostly to say i suspect kegs would hold a much longer span of time than the average consumer bottled product. that's also a lot more beer by volume for the probably better stored/maintained issue to overwhelm compared to much smaller, single bottles. i'm not saying your theory is wrong, just saying i believe there's possibly other explanations as to why it's less likely we'll hear about kegs.

 

I wonder if going forward Goose Island will issue a statement like, "This beer will develop for up to 5 years in the bottle, but only under proper storage conditions. We give no promises for beer stored outside of ideal conditions *insert ideal conditions here*".

 

Every single regular I have drank so far has been amazing. Give them to me if you don't want yours!

 

I think you're confusing the idea of someone not wanting their bottle, with the reality that some of the bottles are bad and people who do very much want them are concerned that the brew won't be what it's supposed to be.

 

If I open my last Coffee tonight and it does happen to be sour, should I still drink it to get drunk?

Asking for a friend.

 

I'm actually confident. I've had 2 others already bottled on the same day and time (yes they all are/were stamped the exact same) and those others were phenomenal.

 

I'm going to do an experiment in the interest of this thread. Planning to use heat and motion in an attempt to accelerate oxidation in one of my bottles over the course of a week. After a week of 90+ degree storage and periodic shaking of the bottle, I'll drink it against a bottle that has been cellared properly since purchase.

All of my bottles to date have been excellent. I've had 3 bottles in the past two weeks that were from the same case: Bottled 10NOV15 1124. I feel confident that all of the beers from the case are in good shape, so hopefully this may shed some light on the possibility of poor storage/shipping being a culprit.

Would love input from others on how to have better control over this, so it has some validity. Will post results with details in about a week. Cheers!

 

Oh man I can't wait to hear the results of this. I was thinking to do the exact same thing.

 

Pulled one bottle yesterday and let it warm up in the garage overnight. I setup one of my fermentation chambers for the experiment this AM... kind of sad to see the chest freezer with a lonely beer in it.

I'm using a temp controller connected to a chest freezer and heater to maintain 90*F with +/- 1*F difference. Current temp is @ 82*F. Should hit 90*F shortly. Gave the bottle some good movement this AM, and will do the same this evening after work.

Part of me thinks this bottle is still going to taste great

Photos below from Day 1 with the control and test bottles, as well as ferm chamber setup:

 

Climate control in the form of central air conditioning arrived in Florida some decades ago. I can't imagine someone being able to afford BCBS and yet keep their house at 90 degrees instead of turning on the A/C. As for the periodic shaking, you got a problem with that? Fun experiment, though. What serving temperature will you shoot for?

 

Anything living in that bottle (bacteria or yeast) is going to freaking love you.

 

As posted before, the temperature is being controlled in a fermentation chamber with a dual-stage temperature controller connected to a chest freezer and small space heater. I highly doubt anyone would have stored the beer at this temp in his/her home, so that's not what this is replicating. It's more likely to me that the beer may have been mishandled by the distributor or the buyer before reaching its final destination at the home.

Both heat and movement are proven to accelerate oxidation. So if I were trying to protect my beer from oxidation, yes, I'd have a problem with my beer being shaken regularly.

Planning to serve both at ~50*F. Cheers!

EDIT: Removed my snarky comment and added clarification to the first paragraph.