Bourbon County Coffee 2015 - Gusher?

If it is a pot shot, then it says a hell of a lot about the person who posted it, and frankly anyone who thinks it is funny... I wouldn't wish this sort of fuck up on anyone... If you worked there you would just take this in stride? It wouldn't make you feel shitty on what is already a pretty bad day?

 

I don't really have an issue with FW's tweet being rude or mean to GI. I agree with you that the marketplace is competitive and that poking fun at another brewer for a flub is probably fine as long as they don't take it too far. FW's tweet was obscure enough that it's hard to get too upset about it.

That said, I have an extremely hard time believing that a brewer as well-funded and resource-rich as Goose Island is half-assing their quality control measures. Sure, it's possible, but I think it's unlikely. What that says to me is that infection--at least with regards to certain kinds of beers--is a risk that can be minimized, but not eliminated completely. In other words, ANY brewer who does a lot of work with barrel-aged beers could someday find themselves in GI's current shoes, even though they may take tons of steps to minimize that possibility.

And when you do something to poke fun at a competitor's failure, it makes for a potentially awkward situation if you ever fall prey to a similar failure yourself. I don't think any less of FW for sending out the tweet, but I do think it opens them up to an unnecessary risk of looking stupid in the future. It's kind of like the sports fan who talks a ton of trash on a rival after they lose an important game, only to turn around and watch his own team blow an equally/more important game.

 

the thing is this. in my view i slammed (1) person, although i prefaced it with the admission it was directed at everyone who missed the fact that the time stamp is just a time stamp (for us). and basically we laughed about it, afterwards, together, in public view. really to me, you kinda sound more annoyed about me supposedly being annoyed than i do about the actual issue at hand. also, not that it matters but 30 years ago i worked in actual distribution for a very large local distributor, "Bay Area Beverage Distributors". i don't doubt any of the points you'r trying to make about GI because we tracked dates hidden/encoded even on BMI cans & bottles way back in 1986. i say this just in case references to where we once worked actually are relevant here, though i have my doubts.

instead of GI, let's focus here for a second. the proliferation of "Batch #" leads some people to think: well, i saw 'batch' 1840 seems to be screwed. i didn't see anything about my 'batch' 1843; thus far, so maybe i don't need to be proactive (enjoy my bottles immediately, consider refrigerating them, worry they might have lingering issues). if people knew that 1843 simply means the inking machine hit their bottle(s) 3 minutes later than 1840, i suspect there would be a different view & urgency in how the two time stamps are interpreted versus the two 'batches'. is that a reasonable assumption? does that help explain or validate why it's important to some of us to try to stop the confusion? in case any of you are looking at this on the tiny "me" scale, i'm not. from the bigger standpoint, where possible, we need to abandon ignorance here. if anyone finds my saying so condescending, i'm genuinely sorry. at the end of the day my hope is at least those offended souls might be properly armed if they choose to comprehend what offended them.

 

We all know that was just a cover you used to explain the sloshing noises when you sent out trade boxes. No need to cover your tracks here.

 

My second thought when I saw that picture from FW, hope they don't regret tempting fate. First thought was ,"wow that's fucking funny"

 

textbook worst-case scenario is playing out here.
before the release...it seems GI had knowledge of either direct or possible infection.
they dump some of it and hope that most of the other stuff is ok.
they can't say anything ahead of time...because they can't have sales of the regular ol BCBS being affected...therefore instituting a possible huge loss on a year's work.

 

Agreed - they need to address the issue. I was more talking about the Firestone Walker tweet and if it was taking a pot shot at the people at GI

 

Time will tell, and if they knew in advance that some batches were suspect and thought 'fuck it' then that is a horrible thing to do to your customers. It is equally plausible they tested the hell out of all the barrels and batches, dumped everything that was even suspect, and thought they had caught it all...

 

FWIW, with all the talk of apologies and whatnot, GI has acknowledged they're looking into it. If you're familiar with Root Cause Analysis in any field, no customer really wants you to rush your assessment or hear guesses or partial information. They want you to figure out what actually caused the problem and that you're taking steps to have it not happen again and THEN you get all the information about it. I'm sure the customer service reps that you are calling/emailing are apologizing to you personally. I'm not so sure a public apology is reasonably expected when they're still trying to figure out what happened, even if they're pretty sure it's their own fault. Especially when this is a niche brand and only two of the rarer varieties of it have been affected so far. Just my two cents. If they fail to ever publicly acknowledge anything on their end, then disregard this post...

 

BCBCS that hit DC had some infected bottles, unsure of the batch number.

 

Right - this exactly. Is like when an airline tells you at the gate that there is a delay, but doesn't tell you why... it just pisses you off more.

 

My buddy who is not on BA checked in with me last night and said his 17Sep15 1116 was a sour disaster, so infected

 

We should give all the Brewers and employees participation trophies, you know...because they tried so hard.

Giving a little "ribbing" to someone else in the industry is no big deal. We are friendly with many of our competitors (different industry) but give each other a hard time when someone screws up. No big deal. If the FW guy truly worked at GI like someone else said, he knows the people and is probably good natured.

 

Sloth posted this info in another thread about two weeks ago, and I noticed my one bottle was one digit off from his (I think it was 1840, but it might have been 1842). Quickly drank mine, and it was awful.

 

In-Bev didn't seem to care too much about the feelings of fellow brewers and craft beer drinkers when they aired that commercial last year during the Super Bowl. Hard for me to feel bad for In-Bev or any of their workers. Well done Firestone Walker!

 

FWIW.... 10 Barrel had a bottle recall for their Swill and Beer #1 Sour a while back.

It was not infected, but instead had an enzymatic reaction was causing serious re-fermentation in the bottle. (for the homebrewers in here, I think they used something similar to Beano that allows longer chain unfermentables to break down into fermentables).

10 Barrel HAPPILY offered money back to anyone who bought bottles... No receipt needed. It was one of the classiest things I've seen in craft brewing... They admitted their mistake and very promptly started cutting checks.

That said, the recall was at least a few months BEFORE InBev bought them out too.

It would be pretty awful for GI to not offer full refunds. Admit the mistake and move on as quickly as possible. Geeks are geeks and will buy good products next year... But many will be less likely to make that move if they feel they are still owed $$$ by the world's largest brewery.

 

As the person who posted this on behalf of Firestone Walker, I can honestly say this was not in any way in response to anything regarding Goose Island. I truly didn't even know about any issues they have had nor would I EVER cross that line and take a shot at them. Our Brewmaster is from GI and we have absolutely nothing but the upmost respect for them and everything they do. I was wandering around the brewery taking photos when I happened to see our brewers taking barrel samples, so I decided to take pics and do two live Periscope videos of it. Our brewer said word-for-word what they were taking samples of, so I wrote that down and that's what I posted, not knowing what the current forums were discussing regarding BCBS.

So please, know that we would NEVER disrespect our brewery friends like that, and were simply offering a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes action in our brewhouse. Nothing more.

 

Phew! Good to know. I got my nickers in a twist over nothing!

 

It ain't just you, my friend...we got a lot of nickers in a twist on this thread

 

Uh-oh - you might have lost some "cred" with those who thought it was such an awesome shot at another brewery!

I did appreciate the tweet when I saw it, just to know the stuff leading up to Parabola getting in bottles. Thanks for sharing!