Brandy Angels Share -

http://lostabbey.com/beer/brandy-angels-share/

Sorry, I wasn't aware that they had issues with it so I can't help there.

 

I had it on tap about 3 weeks ago and it was damn delicious. I can't speak for the bottles though, all I know is Lost Abbey has always had carb issues with certain bottles but not quite specific beers.

 

from this article which interviewed Tomme Arthur:

There is a buzz in the online beer geek community that: You made a bad batch and Lost Abbey won’t make good on it by apologizing and and full on admitting it should not have been sold at any price. What are your thoughts on that?

This is one area where my opinion is clearly at odds with members of the beer community. First, I believe it is a disservice to say that the 2008 Brandy Barrel Angel’s Share was a bad batch. We have lab results that show no contamination and viable yeast in the bottles. There has been a lot of chatter in the online world about our Angel’s Share since we first released it in November of 2006. The 2007 Brandy Barrel version took a turn at about 9 months in the bottle. In 2008 we released the first batch of Bourbon Angel’s Share. It was krausened with freshly fermenting wort. This priming method caused excessive carbonation and speculation that the beer was infected (which it’s not).

Fast forward to February 2009 and our newest batch of Brandy Angel’s Share. We put ourselves in a position with this release “needing” to head out the door. We employed the same methodology as we always do for our bottle conditioning. On release day, we lacked sufficient carbonation in the bottles to make the corks pop out of the bottle. We knew this was going to be an issue. Since that release date in February, we have held back the remaining 300 cases of 375 ml bottles without gas. We also held off on releasing the 750 ml bottles for three weeks until they showed more carbonation in the bottle. At the point we sent them out to our distributors, we felt they expressed a low but discernible level of carbonation.

In doing so, we angered many consumers who felt we let them down. Apologize? I grew up playing baseball and have a competitive streak in me that goes way back. If a pitcher brushes back a hitter by knocking him to the ground, he dusts off the dirt, digs back in the box and stares down that pitcher as if to say “I have this covered.” We took a ton of punches in the online beer community. We’ve brushed ourselves off and are digging back in so to speak. We have to. It’s the only way to stare down this issue and move forward.

Is the beer flat? I maintain the beer is lightly carbonated. I think that much of the confusion surrounding the big bottles has much to do with serving temperature. When the beer is served cold, we see little to no CO2 breakout. If that same beer is served at 60F we see much more expression.

People have been asking us why low carbonation in the bottle and not on draft. My reply is simple. When we package this beer, we expect that most consumers are going to cellar the beer. Over time carbonation gain will come from yeast working in the bottle. The draft versions are packaged via forced injection of CO2 and our target is 2.7 Volumes of C02 for the draft and 2.4-5 Volumes for the bottles.

We have been made painfully aware that this years bottling does not measure 2.4 Volumes of CO2 and we’re working to correct this moving forward. Our new packaging line is actually capable of running beer under pressure as opposed to the near atmospheric levels our current filler requires. As such, we’ll be closer to our target packaging CO2 content in the mixing tank that will result in less CO2 being lost at packing. Basically, more CO2 will arrive in your bottle due to our filler being more sophisticated. We are bottling Wipeout IPA this week for the first time on the new line and are very excited about getting this operational.

 

So I have not been willing to fork over the cash for a bottle, but on tap it was tasty - but very boozy.

 

Thanks for the well thought out and informative reply. /a former Sinner who never had a problem with your lower carbonation beers.