Czig Meister Brewing

Actually have a buddy who is there today just text me..... and they are still doing it....ordered a Falconer and got an old can poured into a pint glass. Apparently this is there new practice....disappointing.

 

I will get my buddy on this lol. He lives a block from Czig and knows the owners well.....

 

What's an "old can" - that suggests it was out-of-code or past the period since canning that most would consider "fresh" (~1-3 months or so?). Not sure CM dates their cans (I see them in several stores in Central Jersey, but never bothered to look at them to see if they're coded) - how else would you know they were old?

But, I agree, at a bar and especially at a brewery, when you order a beer you expect a draught if you don't specify a can or bottle.

I remember being somewhat surprised --- and disappointed when I did a "tour" of Ommegang back in the '90s when the free tastings came out of previously opened bottles (probably from the day before), and they had no draught at the brewery. But, that was free, at least.

Saw a Oskar Blues/Cigar City rep (had on a brewery shirt, but coulda been a Hunterdon rep, I guess) giving samples at a local store the other day and stopped since I'd been years since I tried any Mama's Little Yellow Pils (and wasn't too impressed when I did).

Tried a sample and started discussing their beers (IIRC he claimed most of them, other than NC-brewed Dale's and Jai Alai, were coming from their Texas brewery) when he saw me pick up the 5 cans left from the sample can he poured from and check the date.

"JULY (Whatever date)" I read out loud - sort surprised at a rep giving out ~4 month old samples. At which point, he ended the conversation and called out to some other customers if they wanted to try a taste.

Sure, not outrageously old, but one expects the best/freshest when getting a sample, rather than in-store sampling being just a way to get rid of overstock...

 

Hey guys, just wanted to hop on here and clear the air. First off, we are guilty of pouring a couple of our core beers from cans. We have been super busy as of late on the distribution end of things, as well as new projects, and haven't been able to keep up with the uptick in keg sales of our core beers. As we have 5 core beers that we claim "will always be in stock" our only possible course of action was to pour from our can supply instead of just straight up being out of beer. We agree that this is not a great look for the brewery, as people expect draft, but it was deemed a better look than being out of beer. We also made it a point to pour from the newest batch of cans, which were filled at the same time as the last round of kegs, so the statement of "old cans" is just not true.

The beers we have been pouring have been Shipwright IPA (our year-round IPA and NOT part of the Deep Sea Series ), our Huntsman Kolsch, and our Falconer Pale Ale, which we haven't had kegs of for the tasting room. Also, we have been pouring our Oktoberfest because we are out of kegs for the season, but people are still asking for it, and we only have cans left.

Luckily, we are back, restocked with Falconer and Shipwright, so those will be back on draft upon opening this Wednesday. Unfortunately, our Kolsch is still fermenting at the moment, so give us about a week and a half we should have that back up and running on draft. As far as Oktoberfest goes, we don't plan on brewing any more of that for the season, but we will still pour from cans if someone wants it.

On behalf of the brewery, I apologize for the can pouring, but we made a judgement call to keep our cores pouring, but we completely understand that it is not an ideal situation. In the brewing industry sometimes you have to make a decision between the lesser of two evils, and this just happened to be one of those cases.

Thank you for the support through our bumps along the way, we still strive to provide the best liquid possible no matter what the serving media be, and hopefully you can forgive us for our current canundrum.

Also feel free to slide into my DMs with any questions you may have, and I will answer them to the best of my ability.

Cheers,
Mark and the Czig Meister Staff

 

I cannot confirm they date all of their cans, but I once checked their cans of an IPA (don't remember which one) in the store and they were dated.

With respect to the 4 month old samples, one would think it is in the brewery's best interest to serve samples at the age they think it will drink best.

 

Thanks for coming on the forum and providing an explanation. Always great to see participation from the brewery. It is highly encouraged by those of us who post here.

Looking very forward to trying the new Doppelbock, among your other new recent releases.

 

I appreciate the response and I can see how you were between a rock and a hard place there.

Was there any signage at the brewery about the cans being used? Were they the same price as normal draft pours?

Isn't the pale ale and kolsch in 12oz cans, how were pints done, if they were?


More out of curiosity - and I totally understand if it's a trade secret - are there any oats in the Deep Sea beers? And do they use the same yeast as your IPA and DIPA series?

 

So, when someone order one of the those beers, the bartender didn't respond:
"I'm sorry we currently don't have that on tap, but we do have it in cans. Would you like a can or would you like to pick another beer we do currently have on tap?"

 

To answer a few of these, unfortunately quoting and my phone don't wanna play nice.

We do date all of our cans.

As far as pouring our 12oz cans, and charging for a pint, we have always poured and advertised 12oz pours, even though we pour into pints. When we pour from drafts though, our patrons do tend to enjoy the heavy hand of some of our bartenders.

In this way, the pricing never changed. Though technically if you get a "12oz pour" from when we have draft up, you may be getting more than 12oz.

As far as explaining the situation, all beertenders were aware of this and should have been explaining, but we did not have signage up, and looking back that would have been a better idea. The whole situation was new territory for us and we will certainly be implementing this for the Huntsman and Oktoberfest, and with any others if this should ever happen again.

Final answers, trade secret revealed!
Oats > Yes!
And we do use the same yeast strain for all of our ipas, however we will be implementing a new yeast strain down the road for our New England IPAs to really bring that Juice!

As Ringo would say, "Peace and love, peace and love"

 

Did the beertenders explain as indicated above? Did you ask about why they were pouring from cans and if so what was the response?

 

Just reporting back for research purposes.

Stopped pouring from the can when I saw sediment. Dumped the rest of the can into the glass on the right. This is like an entire final chug from the can down the drain.

I'm going to crack open their new one (Galaxy & Mosaic) soon so we'll see how that is.

 

The bartender didn't mention that it would be a can pour. When I caught sight of the pour off to the side I questioned the practice. I was told by the bartender that they had canned way to much beer and that it hadn't sold (thus my assumption it was old). The bartender also said that if they didn't sell the cans half of the staff would be let go.... A second bartender who overheard smiled and shook his head in agreement.

Question... if cans had to be used why not discount the beer? 5 or 6 dollars for a 12 ounce can at the brewery seems high especially when it's advertised as a fresh draught but is a can pour. If the cans had to be used because the brewery couldn't keep up with keg sales at other accounts it would seem that selling a can at a discount would make sense....

 

Coincidence? Wonder what the dates are on these cans?



Oddly enough, when I went into my local store today asking if they had the new Czig Meister beers, he told me they had the new Deep Sea Series NE IPA, the Kolsch and Shipwright. Shipwright cans were dated August. I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt that maybe it was the store's old stock rather than a new delivery.

 

That is the kind of B. S. that would make me write off a brewery. If you are pouring cans, they better be just canned this week fresh. If you aren't telling me you are pouring me cans (at $6 per ) we are going to have an issue

 

I feel like it's time for another long winded post from Uncle Mark, as there's a lot of stuff flying around in here that I hope to address in the next 43 pages of typing. Here we go!

Unfortunately Bartenders aren't as informed as one would like to believe about the actual production and sales side of things. It's true that we have a lot of cans, but what was being poured at the tasting room was the freshest cans we have in stock.

As far as discounting a can of beer that was in a can, it was from the same batch of the last round of kegs, meaning it was just as fresh, and in the exact amount we pour. In fact the can actually cost us more to manufacture, so we're technically taking a bigger loss.

We get the fact that it was not the right thing to do and apologize for that, and again, we are happy as hell to have most of our beer back on draft,(Oktoberfest is still can only as it is done for the season, and Kolsch is still fermenting so we are pouring from our latest run canned on 10/27 to be perfectly clear) but there are some serious realities in the brewery world that I think a lot of people on the outside don't full understand. I'm not trying to make up excuses, and as such, would love to explain how breweries will from time to time run out of draft beer, how we try to keep 5 core beers in stock year round, trying to cold store all of these cans and have room for more cans, the limited nature of cold storage, and how we use mobile canning and need to schedule these canning dates a month and a half in advance which from time to time leads to an excess of cans. (I would totally be happy to explain this all to vent, because it drives me crazy on a daily basis, but there is nothing sadder than a large bearded man crying).

Unfortunately, most people don't care and will see us pouring canned beer and then have a Thanksgiving sale and try to connect the two events into some conspiracy to force everyone to drink old beer and hate us for it.

Fact of the matter is this. We ran out of draft beer and deemed it the best course to pour from the most recent canning date, as to not be out of beer. Did we handle it the best way? No. Are there things we could've done to provide more information to customers? Yes.

Are we having a Thanksgiving Sale to try to move some stock at deep discounts? Hell yes.
Are we trying to scam people by giving them inferior beer? No.

We keep all of our cans cold stored to maintain freshness, and hold our retailers to the same standards. (Except for our Blacksmith and Prospector, which we keep cold, but don't expect our retailers to do so.) One of the better parts of our job is also QC, which is just a fancy abbreviation for drinking beer, and making sure it is up to par, and something we would be happy buying. We have dumped beer in the past that wasn't up to par, we will continue to dump beer that isn't fit for distribution or up to our standards.

Now, we are having a Thanksgiving Sale on Cans, is it designed to free up some room and give people discounts on beer that wasn't canned yesterday? Yes. Are we trying to hide anything? No. All of our cans are dated, there's no escaping that, and as such, if you deem these dates too old to get at almost half-price, that's fine. To keep total transparency, here are the dates, and discounts on cans we will have available starting today.

Huntsman Kolsch - Canned 8/18 - $28 a case
Falconer Pale Ale - Canned 8/18 - $28 a case
Shipwright IPA - Canned 8/24 - $48 a case
Prospector Amber Ale - Canned 8/24 - $28 a case
Blacksmith Stout - Canned 9/8 - $28 a case

In closing, I hope you all can understand that the brewing business isn't an easy one to predict, and as a relatively new one, we don't have the answers for everything. We just try to do what we can to keep the doors open, and keep making the best beer we can for our customers. I think the notion that any brewery would knowingly serve old bad product to their customers is absurd.

We do this for our customers and for the love of the craft, as I can tell you right now, none of us do it for the paycheck! I'm glad that there are people out there keeping us on our toes, and having the passion to hold us and other breweries accountable for things they see as unfair or just plain bad practice. It leads to the betterment of everyone involved.

With all that said, please have a Happy Holiday, eat lots of food, drink lots of great NJ beer, and spend time with your loved ones.

And if you see this bearded salesman out in the wild, please say hello!

Cheers,
Mark

 

Really appreciate the additional commentary.

Not trying to indicate a conspiracy at all, though I fully understood before I pasted the IG post here how that would look. I was hopeful that you'd come on here and provide the insight that you did above, as we really have no way of knowing without hearing directly from the source, especially since you are right in that (at least) I am an outsider in this industry and do understand the decision making process in such situations without having it explained to me.

As you've pointed out, you have a scrupulous bunch here that cares enough to take the time to engage in such detailed discussions.

 

For sure and we totally appreciate that aspect, and now that I've nested into this forum, I would urge anyone to feel free to reach out with any questions or comments, we always appreciate constructive criticism whether it be positive or negative. I've actually been toying with starting up a blog to report on where we are dropping new releases, as well as just general state of the brewery type stuff, and will for sure cross-post to here with info on such things. Aside from Facebook and Facebook groups and here, we don't really have a central forum for discussion, as our website needs some updating and hopefully (fingers crossed) a forum at some point.

Peace and Turkey Grease,
Mark

 

so..what are you guys doing with Bolero Snort?

 

I think I'm allowed to talk about this?

Either way, we're doing an Imperial Milk Porter conditioned on hazelnuts, and it just got bottles yesterday. Let me tell you, I'm obviously affiliated, but it is tasting awesome. We will be releasing at the brewery December 2nd, and will have a special brewery bottle only release of a variant with maple syrup and cinnamon. It tastes ridiculous.

Stay tuned for distro information.

 

I never was a fan of slug at the bottom of my cans.