Exploding Westbrook IPA?

I was thinking about this yesterday while i was trying to find some brett and no mices. i would much rather see them become a jolly pumpkin like brewery. we don't have enough sour options in the carolinas

 

Isn't this exactly how their limited run of "Farmhouse IPA" was invented? IIRC, the bartender at the tasting room said that beer was a total accident but ended up working out.


as far as bottle and can issues i've only had problems with Covert Hops. So foamy it was unpourable and almost undrinkable. But Lichtinheiner (my favorite), Gose, Dubbel Tree, and a few others have been fine. No experience with the cans.

 

Not sure where you live, but the Brett and no mices bottles were allocated and should be in stores by tomorrow. Grapevine in Fort Mill has it on draft right now.

 

hit the shelves at greens warehouse cola yesterday. thanks for the heads up!! gonna head to grapevine this pm to sample

 

Ive had about 8-10 six packs of Westbrook IPA within the last 6 months (mostly withing the past 6 weeks) and I have not had an issue with a single can. Granted, all but 1 six pack has been bought at Charleston Beer Exchange, but still. I will say that with the absurd heat as of late, any can that is improperly exposed to high temperatures has the potention to explode. I had a can of pepsi explode in my trunk a few weeks ago. If the beer you purchased sat in a hot shipment truck for even a day or two, it could cause expansion of the cans themselves and increase the likelihood of them exploding.

 

We ship everything in refrigerated trucks from our warehouse (in Charleston) to accounts (you can see the units on top) and ship in refrigerated trucks from our breweries around the US as well- no rail shipping (that would be cheaper), especially this time of year. Also, we pick up from Westbrook on Mondays and our warehouse, which is sweater-worthy it is so cold, is only a few miles away-- no chance for the beer to get hot. You may pay 25-50 cents or so a six-pack more for our beers than you would in other states, but it's worth it for us because we rarely if ever have to pick up bad product.

Sorry, just had to jump in from the 'distributor' perspective because it's so important to us. I've been with the same company for over 3 years now

 

unfortunately, you aren't most distributors

 

While your point about high temperatures is correct, I believe there is something else going on with Westbrook's IPA. I just received a shipment from a trader, and (among other things) there was a six-pack of Westbrook IPA & a six-pack of Westbrook White Thai. Four of the IPAs had exploded, spilling their contents. The other two are bulging crazily and look to be on the verge of exploding. The White Thai cans *exposed to the exact same elements* are in perfect condition, not a bulge or defect in sight on the cans.

 

yup, I picked up a 6 of their IPA from a shop in Myrtle and the ones I opened were gushers and the ones that made it home pushed up the top of the can big time..tossed em.

 

Its unfortunate that there is some issue going on with the IPA cans, because it is such a great IPA. I picked up another 6 pack today, only have cracked 1 so far, but no issues here. I wonder if it was just a single batch or something.

 

Good BA's like chefkevlar and ttdriver can vouch that we take good care of our stuff.

I really think the IPA got exposed to some of the other experimental yeasts by accident, however, I am no expert in this realm. I have yet to pick up any exploded white thai. The exploding batch was supposedly brewed on 5/24. I've marked some newer batch 6 packs at one of my accounts with the buyer so we can, together, check out the newer batches, which do not seem to be exploding, but if we do we will know what to report back to Ed.

 

5/24 sounds about right...the cans I had explode was from Alabamas first shipment .. any reports from other batches exploding??

 

The can I had explode + 1 bulger were purchased before 5/24, for what it's worth. I bought it off the shelf at Mickey Finn's in Florence around May 8, give or take a day.

 

I think her point was that since they are the distributor for SC that if there have been issues it has nothing to do with how they were handled between the brewery and the store.

White Thai seems to be the only one that hasn't had any reported problems. o

 

is this still a problem? I am getting ready to purchase some Westbrook cans for a trade and would hate for them to explode in transit...

 

I bought a 6pack on Tuesday and had no issues. That being said I almost always throw a Westbrook IpA in as an extra on trades I make, but I've been scared to ever since I saw this thread.

 

I haven't had any issues since the new batch came out after the canning line was fixed. I would guess that some if not all of the recent issues have actually been the older batch, which are impossible to ID once they are removed from the carboard tray. One way to tell is just to squeeze them as the bad batch cans didn't give at all, even when stored in a cooler the whole time. All of the new batch cans give a bit. So if you are shopping somewhere that turns inventory quick enough and perform the squeeze test I would think you should be ok.

 

thank you sir, I will keep that in mind