Craft Beer and Quality Assurance

Beers can be different from batch to batch - intentionally or not... but the beer that I'm drinking right now tastes different between first opening the bottle and getting midway through the bottle. Never underestimate the changes in how you perceive something.

 

A dirty glass will change a beer dramatically.
I've never had a bad Epiphany. If you don't like it anymore please feel free to send your cans to me. I've got fresh Carton and Kane to send back.

 

Well, I've never had a bad Mastermind.... There is a lot of variation in craft QC. Sierra Nevada is probably better than AB-Inbev; some are pretty hit and miss, most have some variation but no actual bad beers. Sometimes it's outside the brewer's control. One local hoppy beer just wasn't what it used to be for awhile. It turns out that 2014 was a crappy year for one particular hop. When 2015 hops became available the issue disappeared. With Bud, you'd never know if they switched hop varieties, but that option doesn't work too well with dry hopped beers. Plus if you contract to buy a bunch of hops you're pretty much stuck with them unless you can stand a big financial hit.

 

I'm willing to accept my taste perceptions may shift a bit from time to time, or even minor batch variations, but if a beer actually disappoints I quit buying it.

 

One thing to explore a bit is the possible shift in taste having been influenced by what you have had to eat/drink that day or just before.

On more than one occasion I've had beers taste fairly different from one evening to the next despite the fact that each bottle came from the same 6 pack (which means it was the same batch, filled at the same time, and the same age).

To give an extreme example of this kind of effect, if one nightyou drink a Pils and then drink an IPA and then the next night have the IPA before having the Pils. That Pils is gonna taste radically different to you on the two nights.

Such things as the foods you eat can have the same effect, even something eaten for lunch.

Also if you have medications now that you didn't have the last time you had one.... The list goes on.

 

Beer is as variable a vessel as your taste buds are sensitive to different things, just as your nose can detect different aromas. I think summer is a time where this is particularly true. Atmospheric changes and humidity really affect our abilities.
Certain thing just taste better some days than they do others.
Brewers can, try to obtain what is considered an acceptable profile. But, they might also try to tweak it. Or, the crush of the mill they got from the supplier was off. Nature is not consistent either.

 

Taste variations can easily occur from batch to batch, and probably more so if it is a fairly small brewery. Maybe they just changed suppliers for their malt, or couldn't get the exact same malt as used in the last batch because of shortages, etc. Or maybe the grain was malted by a different maltster. Good brewers can detect the taste difference (which is the quality control in small breweries), but their hands may be tied because they can't afford to dump the batch and fix the taste issue for the next batch.

It was mentioned above that what you eat just before drinking a beer can have an effect. There was a thread a few weeks ago that was about how eating a tomato made a tremendous taste difference for the person who started that thread, to the point that he wasn't concerned about the minor taste difference, but that the tomato made his favorite beer go from favorite to worst taste. Different strokes for different folks, so this can vary with the person as well as the particular food.