Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

I plan on starting to open my bad ones pretty liberally at some point so that I can reduce the # of bottles taking up space in my storage. I'm just debating whether to wait until I actually receive my refund or just start doing it right away. I've got 11 left from bad dates, and my plan was to just start popping them open in one night until I get a good one, or until I get sick of opening them and having to continuously taste infected beer.

 

This is an opportune time for experimentation since the bottle aren't good and you are getting a refund. Break out the french press and go to town.

 

Open them now. The problem you are going to run into is they aren't "sniff, pass out, drink, puke" drain pours. The infection is still subtle, and you get tons of great bourbon chocolate fudge, but this hint of tangyness that takes away from what's otherwise total bliss. That "hint," and maybe I'm being generous, will start out soft as the beer is still 50 degrees and get worse as it reaches room temp.

Each bottle will vary, but i suspect you will find yourself drinking more of each bottle that you think. Which is why I say get em gone now, they surly aren't getting better.

My experience has yet to reach one-sip drain pour in over a case.

 

I'll buy more beer with the money they're sending me?

 

All 3 of the "bad" dated bottles I've opened have been drain pours after a sip or two. So, of course when I opened a bad date bottle tonight....tasty.

 

Ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!!
Very independent. That's why 312 etc are being brewed in AB/InBev facilities

 

So was it possible to purchase an "infected" bottle back in November and drink it before the off flavors really took hold, then claim full refund 8 months later? If so GI is going above and beyond normal refund policies and should be seriously commended.

 

They have to brew it somewhere. 312, Honkers, Four Star, & the seasonals are brewed at other facilities. Goose Island could not physically brew all of those beers in Chicago. Bourbon County, the Sour Sisters, Sofie, & Matilda are all brewed & barreled in the city.

That said, Goose Island does not bend the knee to decide what they are going to brew or how they are going to brew it. The talent is allowed to be the talent.

 

I don't really care at this point, but kind of crappy that they set a precedent for what's needed for a refund with BCBCS & barleywine and then changed it for BCBS. I didn't keep drain pour bottles but had photo's with the date & time stamp. Not a big deal because thankfully I drank most of mine while they still tasted great, but I'm sure others are effected much more.

Surprised they aren't getting more heat for this but at the same time they are still doing better than many other breweries handling infected beers, I guess.

 

Vindication! I notified Goose Island of off flavors in 12Oct15s back on Jan 18 2016. No way to get a refund for the ones I had to drain pour, but oh well.

 

So here's a thought for you. Suppose they refunded on the BCBCS & BW for more bottles than they had actually sold. (There have been people claiming online to have gotten refunds for more than they bought.)

If you are in that position yourself, would you continue to use the same procedure, especially when refunding for a subset of the days the beer was bottled?

 

Plus, this is a different set of circumstances than with BCBCS and BW. For those, they refunded all of them, which leads me to believe all batches were infected. For regular, they believe only certain batches were infected, so they need proof of which batch you had. That means they need the picture of the back label with the bottle date...and I'm guessing they want the neck tag so they have at least something physical from the bottle to be provided, so people aren't just sharing pictures with other scheming friends to get refunds for bottles they never really had.

I get that it sucks for those that already drain poured some in the past and didn't keep the bottle, but I can see why GI did it this way. If I had a picture of my bottle, but didn't have the actual bottle anymore to provide the neck tag, I'd probably be asking close friends if they had any neck tags of "good" bottles I could use to send in.

 

In the recent Chicago Tribune article a Goose Island spokeswoman said they refunded nearly 40,000 bottles of Coffee and Barleywine which is only a quarter of the total production of those two beers.

 

That's quite the assumption and don't see why it would be worth the discussion.

Again, I'm not making a stink about it but could understand why others would - since they changed how they would accept refund requests between the different beers released at the same time.

Honestly, I was surprised they offered the first round with as little proof required as they did (good on them!)...but again, they are the ones who screwed up here, not the customers. I don't have an easy solution as it's not an easy problem to sort, but lots of people spent a lot of money on a premium product - not a great situation.

 

Sure it is, that's why it was posed as a hypthetical. But it wasn't meant as a claim or something for serious discussion of it being an accurate representation of what happened, rather it was meant to suggest they might have had a good reason for the change. (e.g., folks claiming refunds to which they were not entitled.)

As you say they required a surprisingly small amount of verification with the first round of refunds. While I don't know the reasons for the change I'm willing to bet that in their own eyes they had a good reason for changing the procedure to something less liberal.

 

Thanks for the info as I've not seen that yet.

 

I've drank 6 bcbs the last 7 months, and all were good. After this report, I checked my inventory. Of my 25 bottles, 13 are infected. I had kept all my old bcbs I've drank, and all 6 I already consumed were good date codes.
Immediately I drank one of the infected dates, and it was definitely sour.
I gotta start chugging the other 12.

 

Probably the total volume of bottles for regular versus those two variants

 

it could be helpful if you could give a picture(s) of the good dated labels vs the 1 bad you opened recently.

 

this. but i also believe they are aware of the number of people who at least claim they would have submitted for coffee & barleywine had they known or been given **enough** time. [the markings around the word enough are to emphasize we all are aware there is some disagreement as to how much time = **enough**].

i would bet there's a good chance at least some of those people would try to recoup their losses this round (without feeling a strong sense of guilt in attempting to do so). the label requirement is a measure of protection there too.