Hello all, One of my local breweries notes on their website: I'm going to assume that a "short fill" simply means that less than 12oz of beer were put into the can/bottle. Are these worth buying? Doesn't less beer in the can or bottle mean more air in the can or bottle? If I drink the beer within a week or two, is this enough time for the excess air to degrade the beer? Thanks.
A buddy of mine works for a local brewery and brings me short filled bottles all the time. I've found no real noticeable difference between a proper 12 oz fill. I normally drink them within a week or two though. Most of the ones he brings are barely short so there is not much more air then usual.
A short fill is not necessarily any more oxidized than their properly packaged beers and can even have less oxygen pick-up if the bottle was foaming over when it was capped. Short fills usually occur at the start up of the run before everything has cooled down and the pressures get in-check, or at the end of the run when they simply run out of beer in the bowl. And as Mattkart pointed out, sometimes "short fills" are actually "over fills". There are other possibilities, but I think I'd take the chance if you consider $8 per six-pack a bargain.
The short fills I have seen are "barely" less than a normal bottle fill. Maybe 1/4 to 1/2 ounce at most? I doubt such a small difference would cause any problems. Now on Sculpin, that 1/4 ounce could be the difference between the beer not being fresh after 2 days instead of 3.
funny that you posted this, last Saturday I hosted an event at a brewery and they let us take 8 cases of short fills. Today I swung by to settle up on everything and they made me take one more, I wasn't going to argue. I can hardly tell they are not 12oz and most likely wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't pointed out to me, I only drank one and it tasted the same. The brewery called them "lowfills", I had never heard of "lowfills" or "shortfills" before Saturday. The guy who gave them to me said they were not allowed to sell them, they have to give them away. In Texas those lowfills are counted as production for tax purposes, so the brewery has to pay tax on it as finished product but they are not allowed to sell, what a kick in the nuts.
