Quality Control - BA Beers

More brewers experimenting = greater chance of infections = increased amount of infected beer

 

Smaller, less experienced breweries that don't have a lab can also be a factor. Using barrels can be a crap-shoot when over-using barrels, but some breweries push the limit through ignorance.

 

The infection is occurring at the brewery in the wood barrels. The good thing about aging beer in wood barrels is the added flavor from the wood and the spirits that were formerly contained within the barrel. The bad thing about aging beer in wood barrels is the potential risk of infection from microorganisms that can be present in the wood.

Breweries should 'check' each barrel for indications of infection prior to blending the barrel of beer with others. If an infection (e.g., off flavor) is detected that barrel of beer should be dumped. Needless to say but checking each barrel for infection is an imprecise thing; just ask Goose Island about this.

Cheers!

 

I think it's as simple as increased sample size. More beer is being put into barrels, whether that's the result of brewers who are new to the barrel-aging game or experienced brewers that are ramping up production.

While some will tell you that preventing infections is as simple as having proper cleaning procedures, the reality is that there is an element of crapshoot to it. The recent kerfuffle with Goose Island, to me, is the poster child for it being impossible to completely eradicate the risk of infection. A lab certainly helps brewers identify possible infection before their product hits the market, but even that isn't a sure thing, seeing as how some infections only begin to show detectable signs after the beer has been bottled.

 

This is from experience with professional brewers who barrel-age. Every barrel is different. Usually not every one ends up producing usable beer. Say a batch is put into 40 barrels, some may not develop as the brewer hoped, some may develop in such a different way to the others as to be unusable, some may get infected. You may only end up with 35 barrels that are usable.

The skill of the brewer is in deciding which ones can be used and which should be discarded or used in something else.

Sure, a well-organised brewery will be doing lab tests. But not on every barrel. That's just too much work. (Though they would do a taste test on every barrel.) So if you've a batch in 100 barrels, there's a chance there might be an infected one in there that wasn't spotted and buggers up the whole lot once everything is blended back together for packaging.

 

Isn't pasteurization 100% fool proof?

 

That's a good point. And as far as I understand it, yes, it will guarantee that your beer won't be turning sour three months down the road.

I think detractors for that approach would say that the beer is no longer "alive"--if a beer can't change for the worse over time, it also can't change for the better. I object to the pasteurization of styles that wouldn't be negatively impacted by additional souring--i.e., lambic, gueuze, wild ales--but I don't know that I feel that strongly about big imperial stouts, barleywines and barrel aged beers. Especially not those that are heavily dependent upon adjuncts, which seem to increase the risk for contamination.

 

@Peter_Wolfe who is a brewing scientist for AB discussed this topic in a prior thread:

“They certainly could be, but then it would make zero sense to cellar them. They're meant to continue evolving in the bottle, and flashing it would prevent that entirely (except for normal staling reactions). So no, I don't think they should be; the occasional infection is just part of genre.

I'm actually pretty opposed to pasteurizing beer period.”

http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...aft-beer-escalates.392547/page-4#post-4589231

Cheers!

 

Based on this article, when Deschutes did (still does?) this with Abyss, the beer is still bottle conditioned afterwards. Which if they used the original yeast strain from the primary fermentation, wouldn't the beer still age as originally intended? I'm not sure on the science of this.
http://beerstreetjournal.com/deschutes-brewing-infection-issues/

 

What needs to be considered, outside of the fact that you are barrel aging it. essentially you are adding a variable to your recipe that cannot actually be controlled as much as we may think. the barrel characteristics become part of the beer. if there is more going on in the barrel than we know it may take on characteristics that were unforeseen. so even if the beer isn't actually infected the flavor profile that develops from the barrel may be perceived as such or may have just an undesirable outcome flavor wise.

 

From the link:

“Going forward, we have purchased a flash pasteurizer and all beer from barrels is now pasteurized (killing the brettanomyces) before it is blended with beer from tanks (that is not pasteurized). Then the final blend is bottle conditioned so all beer is alive when you get it. 2010 The Abyss was treated this way.”

So it appears that Abyss is a blend of pasteurized barrel aged beer with non-barrel aged beer. This blended beer then has yeast introduced?

In my homebrewing I have never ‘killed’ yeast and then reintroduced yeast so I am personally not experienced in this matter. I would guess that something like this could be done to barrel aged beers but I am uncertain what the flavor impacts would be.

@Peter_Wolfe is the best person to comment here since he is a beer industry guy.

Cheers!

 

People need to understand that getting an infected beer is part of the game with barrel aged beers it will inevitably happen to you and all your favorite versions if you drink or them make enough. Technically it was the brewers fault for putting it out but in actuality you can only do so much to prevent it as a company. I'm not sure why people so often and so quickly turn on brewery's for these mistakes (outside of mishandling refunds etc) Seems to me we want them to play with fire, but then we just ridicule them when they get burned.

 

I believe it's a few factors, and the word more is front of each of them. Without physically ripping apart each barrel and investigating each stave and then putting them back together. You can't really predict the future on them. I'd dare say to, it's the continuing threads of people swearing they taste infections when they probably, in fact, do not.

 

I was speaking more in generalities about past discussions I've had with BAs across the main and regional forums. I guess I just personally kind of sympathize with the breweries trying to put out these beers than I do with the customers who got the shaft buying them. Unless they totally mishandle it or dont address obvious and recurring QC issues I don't see any reason put them on blast or not buy their beer (not referring to your comments) but you'd be surprised how easily people seem to turn.

There is a Google doc somewhere showing all the beers and breweries that have had infection problems for the last like ten or so years it becomes pretty clear no brewery or beer is safe unless you brew in a vaccum. I mean the fact we can even brew beer that isn't sour at all still kinda blows my mind.

 

I agree with this 100% and would even take it a step further. To me, there is a shared risk between the brewer and consumer when it comes to barrel aged beers, especially those with adjuncts. Given the fact that there is an inherent roll of the dice, I think it's unfair to expect the brewer to bear 100% of that risk while demanding that brewers put out more and more adjunct-infused, barrel-aged beers. I'd rather bear some of that risk than deal with other risk-mitigating strategies that brewers might use to protect themselves--things like price increases, pasteurization, scaling back production of barrel beers, etc.

That said, I do think the brewer bears some responsibility to release products in good faith. In other words, the beer should meet their own standards for quality upon release. There is no excuse for a beer starting to taste infected or off within a month of release and I think in those situations, brewers should probably do their best to offer refunds or exchanges to make it right. But the further away from release you get, the less responsibility I personally believe they have--I'm not going to stop buying the beer of a brewery I really like because they had put out beers that started to show signs of infection 3, 6, 9+ months out. Others certainly feel differently and I don't blame anyone who doesn't feel comfortable buying a brewery's products any longer. But to me, there is a difference between "well, I'm not comfortable with that risk so I won't be buying anymore of their products" and "screw those assholes they don't give a shit about their customers I'm done with them" attitude that often seems to exist to some degree or another.

 

Any company that puts out a tainted product doesn't care about customers.

 

This approach that Deschutes took is honestly the smartest one they could have, if, as a brewery, you want complete control over what goes out. They still had live yeast in the bottle (but only one kind) to slow aging and provide a fresh taste, but the barrel flavors and mixed culture micro were frozen in time, so to speak.

You either do something like the above, or you decide that the allure of additional bottle aged flavors outweighs the risk of infection. You can't have both, at least not yet (advances in fast PCR techniques might allow it down the road).

 

I always think back to Avery's Black Tot. It tasted great on day 1 and bottles were fine for a few weeks to months.
Then it almost all went south. I think a few bottles escaped tasting excellent, but most were tainted.

Most others that I'm familiar with tended to have issues that were more immediately noticeable.